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REVOLT OF THE TREES^’ by ALLISON V. HARDING

DERLETH

SEABURY

Subterranean horror,

dimensional fantasy

**Priestess of the Labyrinth’’
EDMOND HAMILTON

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JANUARY, 1945 . Cover by Margaret Brundage

NOVELETTES

PRIESTJ;3S OF THE LABYRINTH Edmond Hamilton 8

Wheit you hear the blood-chilling bull-bellow you*U know you* re tn
the haunt of the Minotaur — from which no man can escape

REVOLT OF THE TREES . , Allison V. Harding 40

There is one plan for the destruction of civilization too incredible
to believe — yet there is evidence . . . /

THE GREEN GOD^S RING Seabury Quinn 50

In the glassy-eyedf hang-jawed expression of the face we read
the trademark of the King of Terrors

SHORT STORIES

SHIP-IN-A-BOTTLE P. Schuyler Miller 27

It was an old shipy a square-rigger y perfect in every detail even
to the midget captain with shining hook for a hand

THE INVERNESS CAPE August Derlcth 34

Some foreign weavers have more than human craft — almost as
though a life and a soul were everyday materials to work with

THORNE ON THE THRESHOLD ........ Manly Wade Wellman 66

An asylum for the insane is just the place to perfect various
knowledges which are certainly beyond normal

THE POEMS .... Ray Bradbury 74

The paper dissolves into things . • . it*s not symbols or
reading any more, it*s living!

TATIANA Harold LawSor 82

There was something about her, beyond and beneath her beauty.

that was coldly terrifying
VERSE

GRAVE ROBBERS Marvin Miller 39

THE CASTLE Glenn Ward Dresbach 65

SUPERSTITIONS AND TABOOS Irwin J. Weill 81

THE EYRIE AND WEIRD TALES CLUB • 92

Except for personal experiences the contents of this magazine is fiction. Any use
of the name of any living person or reference to actual events is purely coincidental.

Published bi-moxithly by Weird Talcs, 9 Rockefeller Plaza. New York 20, N. Y. Reentered as aecond-class matter
Januaiy 26, 1940, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 6, 1873. Sinsrle copies. In cents.
Sv.bsGription ratea: One year in the United State.s and possessions, 90<*. Forciijn and Canadian postage extra.
English Office: Charles Lavell, Limited. 4 Clements Inn, Strand. London, AV.C.2, England. The publishers are not
responsible for the loss of unsolicited manuscripts although every care will be taken of such material while in their
possession. Copyright, 1344, by Weird Tales. Copyriglited in Great Britain. -u 173

Title registerefl in U. S, Patent Office.

PWUTRD TN THE U. S. A. Vol. 38. No. 3

D Mcll.WRAITH, Kd^ior.

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pLEASfi mentioa Newsstand Fiction Unit when answering; advcrtiscinsats

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Neiv Boohs from Arhhum House!
LOST WORLDS

by Clark Ashton Snoith

I'his second selection of Smith's tales has 22 titles, including The Gorgon, The Treader of
the Dust, The Hunters from Beyond, The Beast of Averoigne, The Letter from Mohaun Los,
etc. Splendid and terrible accounts of Hyperborea, Zothique, Xiccarph and other vanished
worlds, written as only Smith can write them! Over 400 pages, with a jacket photograph of
Smith’s weird scul-ptures! $5.00 the copy.

MARC;iI\AI.IA

by II* P* Lovccraft

This surprise book has already brought in hundreds of advance orders, so that it can be said
that the edition will not last long. It contains prose fragments, revisions, _ ghost-written pieces —
among them, Imprisoned With the Pharaohs, Medusa’s Coil, The Thing in the Moonlight,
Notes on the Writing of Weird Fiction, etc. There are appreciations of HPL by Long, Scott,
Wandrei, Derleih, and others. And there arc, too, photographs of HPL, his study, script,
drawings — a “must” book for all the fans. $3.00 the copy.

JUMBEE

and Other Uncanny Tales by Monry S. Whitehead

First reviews hail this first collection of the late Rev, Whitehead’s macabre tales of voodoo and
obeahs as a little masterpiece of the supernatural. Here are such unforgettable tales as Cassius.
Passing of a God, the Shadows, Mrs. Lorriquer, The Black Beast, Seven Turns in a Hangman’s
Rope, and others — 14 of them. Lovecraft thought Whitehead one of the best writers ever
to contribute to WEIRD TADES, from which most of these fine stories of the mysterious
VN^est Indies have been culled. $3.00 the copy.

THE EYE AND TH E FINGER

by Ronald Wandrei

“Nearly every variety of horror known to the short storyl If the sole function of a horror
story is to horrify, this volume can be safely recommended to all addicts of clear conscience
and strong stomach!” — says The New York Times of this first collection of tales by Donald
Wandrei, a book including for the first time in complete form The Red Brain, and 20 other
stories of the weird and of science-fiction. $3.00 the copy.

SLEEP NO MORE!

20 C^eat Horror Tales, edited by Angnst Derletfa

In this handsome volume, illustrated by Lee Brown Coye, there are such titles as M. P. ShiePsThe
House of Sounds, Robert Chambers’ The Yellow Sign, Alfred Noyes' Midnight Express, and 17
ethers by Long, Bloch, Jacobi, Talman, Blackwood, James, Smith, Burke, Wakefield, Collier, R. E.
Howard and others. Published by Farrar ^ Rinehart, distributed by Arkham House at $2.60 the copy.
WARNING TO THE FANS! — The time to order these books is NOW, WHILE COPIES ARE STILL
AVAILAIJLE. Please do not order any one of our four early titles; all are gone. Ten days after
our advertisement appeared in the last issue of WEIRD TALES, Derleth’s SOMEONE IN THE PARK
.and Lovecraft’s BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP joined THE OUTSIDER AND OTHERS and
Smith’s OUT OF SPACE AND TIME! in the out-of-print column. We have left ONLY 60 copies
of Wandrei's poems, DARK ODYSSEY, illustrated by bis brother Howard, and stock of all our
new books is sljrinking far more rapidly than we dared to hope. Plans are going forward for an
omnibus bv Robert E. Howard, and collections by Bloch, Long, and others in 1945. Send for our
catalog, and ORDER NOW!

ARKBAM nOUSK, Saak City, Wisoonsin.

I’leaso send me the following, for which I eucloeo payment in full :

copies of LOST WORLDS, at ?3.00.

copies of MARGINALIA, at $3.00.

copies of JUMDKK AND OTHER UNCANNY TALES, at $3.00.

copies of THE EYE AND THE FINGER, at $3.00.

copies of SLEEP NO MORE!, at .$2.60.

COpie.S of DARK ODYSSEY, at $2.00.

N.iiue

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c/?

riestess of the Labyrinth

The ancient world dreaded the Labyrinth for in it strange magic worked
and horror walked curving ways

M arlin felt the Lightning buck
and shudder like a wounded
horse as a shell hit the right
wing. The stunning shock of the explosion
smacked him hard against his belt. He came
groggily out of his daze to find tliat his
plane lacked a wing and was tumbling
downward through the darkness.

"I would have to run into flak on my last
mission!” he thought sickly.

No time for further thought! The crippled
plane was screaming down through the night
toward the Nazi-held island of Crete at in-
creasing speed,

Marlin ripped the cowling open, un-
buckled his belt, and clawed his way up out
of the seat. Then the wind caught his lanlcy
young figure out of the plane, and he was
tumbling head over heels down through the
darkness.

The discipline of a Texas training field
half the world away held good in Marlin’s
mind. Automatically, he counted, waited,
and pulled his rip-cord. The white cup of
the parachute unfolded over his head.

He looked down. A few thousand feet
beneath him lay the moon-silvered wash of
the Mediterranean. Beyond to the south

By EDMOND HAMILTON

stretched the northern shore of Crete, a black
mass.

That dark cape down there where anti-
aircraft guns were spitting viciously was
Candia, he knew. He had been watcliing the
flak only a minute before, as he helped

shepherd the bombers that now were swoop-
ing toward the target of the city harbor.

Marlin’s thin, dark face veas grim as he
waved after the roaring Liberators. "See you
again some day, boys — I hope!”

He turned his attention to his own pre-

Heading by MARGARET BRUNDAGE

WEIRD TALES

dicament. He shortened the parachute cords
on one side, trying to drift toward the dark
land.

Crete was still in Nazi hands, in this
early spring of 1944. The ancient island, seat
of the strangest and most mysterious civiliza-
tion of antiquity, still warded tlie bastions
of the Balkans against Allied invasion.

Three years before, when Brad Marlin
had been an archaeological student at Har-
vard, it had been his dream to visit Crete
some day. He had envisioned himself delv-
ing into the ruins of that enigmatic and
mighty civilization, that great riddle of the
past presented by the uncanny mytlis of
Cretan science and power.

But he hadn’t planned to visit Crete this
way! Not dropping out of a night made
hideous by screaming anti-aircraft shells and
fiery rockets and the thunderous explosion
of bombs now hitting the Candia docks.

Marlin knew that at the best, he faced a
Nazi concentration camp until the war’s end.
And his fate might well be worse. Stories
had drifted back about the treatment of cap-
tured Allied fliers. The Nazis feared coming
invasion, feared it enough to make them
ruthless in questioning Aose Allied pilots
who fell into their hands.

"If I could hide out in the hills and get
down to a fishing-boat some night, I could
still get away,” Marlin sweated.

But first he liad to reach tliose hills! He
was drifting down toward the huddled mass
of Candia, the big seaport city.

Marlin held the chute-cords tightened un-
til they cut his hands, and prayed for an
inshore wind. He hit one at the two-thou-
sand-foot level and it swept him beyond the
bomb-rocking city.

He saw the silver thread of a river below,
and knew it must be the Karaitos that ran
past the ancient site of Knossos. Then those
white patches of stone columns and walls
below were Knossos itself, the ruins of the
ancient Cretan capital.’

k FEW minutes later, he alighted on a
■fc -k ridge just beyond the white forest of
ruins. The Ante dragged him roughly over
the bumpy ground until he got it collapsed.
Ke stood panting, a lanky young figure in
his flying suit, his black hair bare, his dark,
thin face strained.

In the moonlight, the white mir.s that

were ail that was left of ancient Knossos
stretdicd on hi.s right Farther inland from
him, there y.an'fic.i sii.adowy gorges that ran
back into the hiiis.

Marlin felt tlie irony of it as he glanced
at tlie pillared luins. As a student archaeolo-
gist, he had drc.imed of coming to this very
spot. Its tales of .•‘oagic wonders, of the cruei
sea-kings, of the sorcerer-scientist Daedalus
and his doomed son Icarus who had been
the first men to fly, of Labyrinth and Mino-
taur, liad puzzled the world for four thou-
sand year.-;.

And now he w-as here at ruined Knossos
—but in mortal danger. He must not fail
into Nazi hands. If they' hadn't seen him
landing, if hs could hide out in tliese bills
until he found some native fisherman ro
smuggle liim out —

"Er ist da"’ shouted a sharp voice through
the moonlit ruins at that moment. "SchneW’’

Marlin's hopes shattered like a bubble. He
had been seen falling. Dark figures were
running toward him through the ruins.

"Stop or we fire!” cried a sharp voice, in
English, as Marlin turned and ran toward
the inviting darkness of the nearest gorge.

An automatic rifle let go a moment later
and bullets screamed off the stone pillars
around the running American.

The rattle of the rifle was drowned by the
successive explosions of bombs falling, rip-
ping the Nazi barracks between Candia and
Knossos. Marlin heard the roar of the Liber-
ators sw’eeping closer as he ran.

He was in the gorge. He stumbled along
a dry stream-bed with the boots of the Nazi
patrol pounding loudly behind him. He
tripped over loose stones, collided with
boulders in the deep shadows.

He could hear the Nazi officer who com-
manded the small patrol cursing his men and
urging them to greater speed. The stone
walls of the ravine, sculptured long ago by
the builders of dead Knossos, held mon-
strous bull-headed figures who glared dov n
at the running pilot in the moonlight.

Marlin heard the Nazi officer yelling to
his men not to fire, to take the Amerikaner
alive. He knew what that meant. It meant
a merciless inquisition by the Germans that
he would probably not survive.

Blam! Blam!

Flame and thunder rocked the gorge as
a stick of bombs started falling along it from

PRIESTESS OF THE LABYRINTH

a Liberator a little south off its target.

Marlin knew the rest of the stick was
coming, and dived behind a big boulder as
tlic explosions rocked along the rest of the
ravine and brought down showers of pebbles
from its split rock walls.

He hoped for a moment that one of the
bombs had got the patrol pursuing him,
but his hopes were dashed when he heard
that sharp, hateful voice a moment later.

'’SchnclW’

Marlin was breathless, his heart slugging
his ribs, as he stumbled on around a curve of
the moon-dappled, narrow gorge.

Pi.ock debris was still sliding from a sculp-
tured cliff that had taken the full impact of
a bomb. Marlin glimpsed a dark opening or
cavity in the shattered cliff.

He stumbled toward it. It was a possible
hiding-place. He could not go farther, in
any case. This whole region would soon be
alive with searching patrols, for now' the
Liberators were leaving.

.He scrambled through the opening, and
W'as surprised to find that it was no mere
cavity in the rock but a high, narrow tunnel
that led back into the cliff. And it was man-
m.ade, for the floor and walls were smoothly
squared.

He realized instantly w'hat it was. An
ancient passageway of the Cretans, uncov-
ered after ages by the explosion of the
bombs.

Marlin grinned mirthlessly in the dark-
ness. "Hell of a way to make an archaeo-
logical discovery,” he thought.

It was pitcli dark in the tunnel. He groped
forward. There was an intense silence, all
the clamor outside now cut off.

The tunnel curved. It curved until it was
going at right angles to his former course. It
went straight a little way, then wound
spirally downward in what was actually an-
other right-angle change of course, and then
again it became a straight passage for a few
yards.

Then it curved again until it was follow-
ing a course at right angles to aU three of
the former directions. And as he went
around this final turn of the quadruple curve.
Marlin felt a dizzying, sinking sensation
as though he were falling through infinite
sp.‘'ces.

Marlin stopped, suddenly startled by reali-
zation. "Wha.. the devil! I couldn’t h.xve

made jour turns all perpendicular to each
other!”

T hat was impossible, for there were
only three dimensions. Three spatial di-
mensions, that is — the only fourth dimension
was the abstract one of time.

He swore to himself. ”1 must be getting
dizzy and imagining things in this darkness.”
Yet Marlin knew he wasn't, that he had
really turned in four mutually perpendicular
directions. For he had the unerring sense
of direction and orientation that a fighter-
pilot must have to the last degree.

"But it’s crazy! You can’t make four dif-
ferent right-angle turns when there are only
three dimensions.”

Marlin groped mystifiedly onward. Other
tunnels forked from the one he followed,
he discovered.

He felt utterly baffled. "What the devil
kind of a labyrinth is this?”

A labyrinth? No, the Labyrinth! He sud-
denly realized it. He had found the long-
hidden and long-sought great secret of an-
cient Crete!

The very words labyrinthine and laby-
rinth came from this place. This was the
magic maze built beneath ancient Knossos
by Daedalus, legendary scientist of Crete,
the man supposed to have invented artificial
wings.

Marlin remembered those tales of the
dread of all the ancient world for the Laby-
rinth in which strange magic w'orked, in
which horror walked curving ways no man
could escape once he entered. Daedalus, they
said, had built the Labyrinth and made it the
haunt of the Minotaur, the terrible man-bull.

"And that stick of bombs uncovered the
entrance to it,” Marlin thought. "Hidden all
these centuries — ■ '

Marlin found himself groping around an-
other of the uncanny quadruple curs'es.
Again, his head swam with strange dizziness
as he rounded the fourth right-angle. Some-
thing like panic came over him.

He turned around, to retrace his steps.
Then he stopped and stiffened as a sharp
echo came through the dark from the way
he had come.

"Vorwarts — schnell!”

The Nazi patrol had seen him enter the
tunnel and had come into the Labyrinth after
him, he realized!

WEIRD TALES

He gave up all thought of turning back
and ran on gropingly through the dia-
bolically twisting tunnels. The voices echoed
louder behind and he had a dismaying sense
of being hopelessly trapped in this ancient
maze.

Then came something that brought the
hair prickling up on Marlin’s neck. It was a
sound, but not a sound of voices. And it
came from ahead of him, not from behind.

A distant, echoing, bellowing sound, im-
utterably brutish and hideous, boomed
through the darkness of the curving tunnels.
Tliat blood-chilling bull-bellow stopped
Marlin in his tracks.

"Good God!” he whispered. “That sounds
like — ”

He could not finish the sentence, even to
himself. It was too insanely fantastic.

That hideous bellow had been both hu-
man and taurine in quality. It had been like
the mingled voice of bull and man.

“Just an echo!” he told himself thickly.
“Imagination getting the best of me, making
me think of the Minotaur legend.”

Yet if the Labyrinth itself was now proved
a reality, might not the dreaded Minotaur be
real also? The Minotaur, monstrous guardian
of the magic maze, surviving centuries and
still haunting this place?

The rush of feet, the flash of light from
behind him, woke Marlin from his stupor
of amazement and spun him around. Two
Nazi soldiers, led by an oberleutnant with a
flashlight, had come around the curve behind
him.

"Stop — raise your hands or we shall cut
you down!” shouted the German officer as
Marlin turned to run.

M arlin had no choice. The two auto-
matic rifles of the soldiers were trained
upon him. The flashlight beam made him a
perfect target.

He helplessly raised his hands. The Nazis
approached. The young lieutenant searched
him efficiently for weapons, and found none.

"Amerikaner, as I thought,” he snapped.
"Who told you about this hiding place —
the Greek underground? How long have
they been using it?”

'The Nazi lieutenant was younger than
Marlin. He was tall, stalwart, superbly mus-
cled, with a face as cold and merciless and
handso.me as a panther’s.

Marlin’s lanky figure sagged a little from
fatigue and frustration. “I never knew of
the place before, and doubt if anyone did,”
he answered. "The bombs that hit the gorge
uncovered it.*

“A likely story!” sneered the Nazi. He
glanced along the curving tunnel. Its floor
and sides were of smooth, massive blocics.
The roof was almost out of sight overhead.

"An ancient Cretan relic, without doubt,”
tlie German muttered. His eyes narrowed. "I
begin to understand now. The ruins of
Knossos were excavated for years by Sit
Arthur Evans, the English archaeologist. He
and his co-workers must have found this
place and kept it secret — probably it’s been
used by Allied spies and tlie underground
right along.”

One of the two Nazi soldiers, who had
been looking nervously along the tunnel,
ventured to address the officer. Marlin knew
enough German to understand.

"Lieutenant Preyder, can we not leave?
This place is creepy — the giddiness we felt
coming through it, and the cry that Blaun
heard — ”

"Blaun heard an echo!” snapped Preyder
scornfully. ' 'And the dizziness is due to tlie
bad air in this place.”

"It didn’t sound like an echo,” muttered
the man Blaun. "It sounded like the cry of
some monster.”

Preyder 's ice-gray eyes were fixed on the
American. "You are going out with us for
questioning. You must know something
about the Allied plans for invading Crete.”

Marlin had expected that, and he smiled
crookedly. “I’m just a fighter-pilot. I rarely
talk over strategy with General Wilson.”

Preyder’s lips tightened. "But you can
give valuable information, I'm sure, Gestapo
headquarters in Candia will see to that — ”

The man Blaun interrupted by opening
his mouth and screaming. He screamed like
a man who has seen the devil rise before
him.

A terrific bull-bellow shook the corridor.
Marlin spun, reckless of the rifles. He stiff-
ened, like the others, in horror.

In the shadows beyond the flashlight
beam, a vague, monstrous shape towered up
and was glaring at them with flaming eyes.
Incredible, that monster. The eye saw it but
the brain rejected it.

It was human, manlike, in bodily form.

PRIESTESS OF THE LABYRINTH

But the misshaped, massive head, the brutish
jaws, the great horns of the giant skull —
they were not human. Bellowing, it charged
toward them.

TVyTARLIN was as frozen as tlie Nazis by
■^Vi the rush of the monstrous creature.
That human form, that massive, taurine,
horned head with its flaming eyes and gap-
ing jaws — they coaWwV be real!

Then the American was shocked to the
reality of it by the shriek of the Nazi soldier
beside Blaun. That man had been nearest the
creature, and its lowered horn had caught
his side as the thing charged.

"Gott!” screamed the soldier Blaun,
scrambling frantically to flee.

Preyder had whipped out his revolver and
was firing. The bullets ripped the shoulder
of the bull-horned giant, and blood spouted.

That spurt of blood, more than anything
else, convinced Marlin that it was no insane
nightmare. The crashing echoes of the gun-
fire were followed by a terrific bellow of
pain from the creature.

It turned and with incredible swiftness
darted back around the curve of the tunnel.
Its bellowing reached them in a hideous,
brutish clamor of rage and pain.

Preyder’s face was pale and glistening
with sweat. "Bull-head and man’s body —
the Minotaur of ancient legend!’’ he husked.
"But it can’t be — ’’

His revolver warned Marlin back as the
American started to bend over the fallen
Nazi soldier. Preyder himself stooped over
the man, picking up his rifle and then ex-
amining him. The man was dead, for that
savage horn had ripped his heart.

'"The thing was real enough to kill that
man of yours,” muttered Marlin, feeling an
icy horripilation along his spine. "This is
the ancient Labyrinth of Knossos, no doubt
of that. Legend always said that it was
monster-haunted.”

"But that thing, monster or not, could
not have lived in here for four thousand
years!” exclahued Preyder. "It was flesh and
blood, monstrous as it was. And flesh and
biood can’t live that long.”

Thunderous bawling echoes of the man-
bull’s bellow'ing rocked the vaulted tunnel
again. And they seemed now to be answered

from other directions in the dark, intricate
maze.

"Gott, there are otlier of the creatures in
here!” w’hispered the shaking man Blaun.

"If there are, we can handle them with
the guns!” snapped Preyder. 'The Nazi offi-
cer’s pale eyes had a gleam in them now.
"We’ve found something big here — a mys-
tery that must be investigated. But it’s a
job for headquarters to handle. We’ll get
out now with this Amerikaner and make our
report.”

Not for a moment had Marlin been able
to make a break. Preyder’s gun had covered
him since the disappearance of the bull-
monster, and now he motioned with the
weapon back along the tunnel by which they
had come.

The man Blaun seemed frantically eager
to get but of the place, as they started back
along the curving passage. Preyder followed
them closely, the dead man’s rifle in his
hands.

Clamorous echoes of the hideous taurine
bellowing w^ere louder about them now,
seeming to come from all directions. They
came to a fork in the curving tunnel.

"To the right,” ordered the Nazi officer
confidently. "That is the way we came.”

But the right fork wound left, as soon as
they entered it. It curved and curved again
in those weirdly dizzying loops and spirals,
until they seemed going ever deeper into the
baffling Labyrinth.

Preyder stopped and swore. "We’ll have
to go back and take the other turn.”

But they did not seem able to find that
fork when they retraced their steps. For w'hat
seemed hours, they stumbled through the
dark tunnels in vain searcli. And ever the
brutish bellowing was louder, nearer!

Marlin’s head reeled. The geometry of
this maze was unearthly. That was the only
word for it. Time and again they would go
through one of those uncanny quadruple
loops which each time gave Marlin the dizzy-
ing sensation of moving through a fourth
dimension.

The terror of the man Blaun was now
extreme. The bellowing followed them, al-
ways behind. Flaming eyes watched from
the darkness behind them. Yet when Preyder
turned the beam back, they would never be
in time to see anything but a flash of move-
ment.

WEIRD TALES

''There must bs a dozen of the cieatuies,”
Preyder mattered, in licii's name are

they.^ '

ile specuiated aloud. "Genetic experi-
ments might produce sucli monsters. But
why here, in this hidden maze.^ It's too
cursed appropriate with the Minotaur
iegend."

ELis iiashlight beam was dimming, tlie bat-
tery failing. Preyder forced a pace of des-
perate urgency. They stumbled through the
cur\’ing ways with the little light grov.-ing
weaker each moment. And the bull-bcUow-
ing behind grew louder, nearer, exultant.

It seemed like a crazy dream, to Mariin.
He'd wake up and find himself badt at
Bengasi base with the morning sun pouring
through the tent-flap. He’d draw a long sigh
of relief to find himself awake —

The light went out! A wail of terror from
the man Blaun was echoed by a savage
chorus of taurine bellow'ing from behind.

“Keep your rifle against the Amerikaner
and shoot if he tries to escape in tire dark!"
exclaimed Preyder to the Nazi soldier.

Flaming eyes were coming toward them
tlirough the dark, Preyder fired at tliem.
But the crashing roar of gunfire was fol-
lowed only by the whine of bullets glancing
olf the curved stone W'alls.

“Look — there's a light!" screamed Blaun.

Mariin saw. It was a dim, cflulgent white
glow that was dawning along the curving
tunnel from behind them.

It came into view, something tiny and
glowing that was advancing along the curv-
ing passageway.

"Good God!" muttered Marlin. "It’s a
girl!"

The figure approaching almost confirmed
his belief that he was dreaming. She was
as uncannily beautiful as the buil-mea had
been uncannily hideous.

S HE was tall and fair-haired, a slim figure
in low-cut waist and long, flounced white
skirt. Her yellow hair, falling to her shoul-
ders, 'vvas bound around her temples by a
golden circlet in tlie front of which was set
a great crystal that emitted the soft, dim
glow of light.

Marlin's skin crawled as he saw that in
tlie shadows just behind her the flaming
eyes of the man-bulls were advancing also,
and tliat she paid no attention to them as

tiiey followed her. Her sea-blue eyes wcfc
fixed in wide amazement on the three men,
her face white and startled.

"You are men from beyond!” she gasped,
amazement and dawning terror in her eyes.
"You have opened the Labyrinth!''

Marlin could only vaguely understand her
language. It w'as Greek — not tlie ancient
Attic he had learned in his Harvard class-
rooms but a dimly distorted dialect of that
tongue.

“What do you mean.^ Who are you? " he
husked in iialting Attic.

’’Golt, look at her arms!" clicked Blaun.

Marlin looked, and felt a deepened se.nse
of the uncanny. He had noticed that the girl
wore golden, serpent-like orriaments twined
around her arms. Now he saw that t-he
golden serpents ivere alive. They were no:
metal, but little golden snakes which en-
twined each arm and raised their heads to
stare at the men with wise, wide yeiiow
eyes.

A girl out of mystery, a girl who spoke
the ancient tongue and wore living serpents
like the snake-goddesses of the ancient
world, and who seemed to have no fear cf
the incredible taurine iiorde .sh ufflin g in the
deep shadows behind her!

Preyder broke in. The Nazi officer ap-i
pareatly knew the classical Greek of t.hs
schoolroom also, and he spoke sharply to the
girl.

“Are you of the underground?" he de-
manded of her. “What ate those brutes be-
hind you?"

The girl glanced only a moment back a:
the vague, monstrous forms of the shadowy
shapes that bulked behind flaming eyes.

'The Minotaurs? Do not be afraid — they
will not harm you. They obey me always."

The Minotaurs? Marlin’s brain reeled.
Legend was co.ming true before his eyes.
What did it all mean?

"I am Luane, priestess of the Temple and
daughter of the high priest," she was sa*.--
ing rapidly. The dread in her blue eyes
deepened as she added, “Your opening cf
the L.abyrinth is a disaster neither he nor i
had foreseen: You must' come at once with
me to my father Daedalus!"

'"Daedalus?” Even Preyder was stunned
out of his suspicious attitude for a moment
fay chat name.

Daedalus, legendary builder of the Laby-

PRIESTESS OF THE LABYRINTH

rinth? The fabulous sorcerer-scientist of
ancient Crete who was even supposed to
have invented artificial human wings that
had brought death to his son Icarus? This
girl — the daughter of Daedalus?

Luane seemed to understand Marlin’s
sti' ’refaction, the Nazi’s incredulity. "My
fatlier will explain all to you. But you must
come with me at once. There is terrible
danger every moment that yoit linger
here!’’

Her desperate urgency, the dread of mys-
terious catastrophe that widened her eyes,
penetrated the daze of the men.

"She’s either crazy or lying but she must
know a way out of tliis devil’s maze,’’ mut-
tered Preyder. "We w'ill go with her. But
you’ll get a bullet in the back if you try an
escape, Amerikaner!”

"This way — and hurry!” Luane exclaimed,
already leading the way forward along the
curving tunnel, the radiant jewel on her
forehead lighting the way dimly.

Marlin followed at her heels, Blaun and
the officer close behind him. And in the
shadows behind them came the shuffling,
trampling footsteps of the monsters the girl
had called Minotaurs.

Marlin’s brain was beginning to grasp a
possible unearthly explanation of this mad
situation. He was remembering the uncanny
quadruple curves of the twisting maze, that
had given him the sensation of turning
through a fourth dimension. The fourth
dimension of matter was time. Then this
incredible Labyrinth wound its maze not
only through space but also through time?
Had brought them into past time when
ancient Crete existed?

L UANE’S steps were quickening, as
though dread spurred her. She led the
way through the insane maze without the
slightest uncertainty. Finally the tunnel they
followed ended in a heavy door of silvery
metal.

Luane bent forward, so that the crystal
upon her forehead touched an engraved boss
on the door. The door clicked, and then
swung open.

"Hurry, now!” she pleaded as they passed
tlirough the door. "There is no safety' until
we reach my father’s laboratory,"

They had entered a dark, vault-like room
of stone. The girl was h.astcning toward a

spiral of stone steps that climbed upward
around it.

Marlin looked back wonderingly. The
massive silver door had swung shut behind

them. The monstrous horde of bull-men,

then, had not followed them up out of the
tunnels?

"They do not leave the Labyrinth,” Luane
said quickly, as though guessing his thought.
"They do not like the upper world, those
poor children of pain and darkness.”

"Where are we?” demanded Preyder
harshly, suspiciously, his gaze searching the
dim, vaulted room.

"In the lowest level of the Temple of
Wisdom,” answered the girl. "Come
quickly!”

They climbed after her. Daylight, sun-
light, showed somew'here above them. Mar-
lin saw that the little golden serpents twined
around the girl’s arms now lifted their heads
eagerly toward the light, preening them-
selves.

They climbed up into a big oblong ball
of unstained white marble whose brilliant
light dazzled their eyes. The light came
from a pillared window at one end, which
opened on a landscape of white sunlight.

The man Blaun uttered a hoarse cry.
"Wliere are we? This is not Crete!”

Marlin was stunned by the vista too. But
not as mi'ch as the Nazis. He had been half-
expecting this.

Outside lay a mighty city, one larger and
far different than any town of modern Crete.
Tens of thousands of unpretentious houses
of sun-dried brick, a sea of flat roofs,
stretched toward the blue sea and the harbor
in which were a forest of masts. Far out on
the sea, strange galleys with colored sails
were cleaving the waves.

Through the streets of the city swirled a
bewilderingly polyglot crowd. Marlin’s eyes
ran over them dazedly. Cretan soldiers in
bronze helmets, armed with heavy swords
and double-bladed axes; Greeks in short
chitons; dark-faced Egyptians in linen robes;
towering, skin-clad Hittites; all the ancient
Mediterranean world seemed represented
here.

On a low hill a mile eastward rose a struc-
ture that was colossal. It dominated the city,
that massive, oblong marble bulk that
crouched like a drowsing white dr.'.gon
watching the sea. Those looming walls arm

WEIRD TALES

colonnades of pillars, those giant stairvi'ays
•and rounded cupolas, were familiar to Mar-
lin as though remembered from a dream.

"The palace of Minos!’’ he husked. "And
this city is Knossos in the great age of Crete!"

Luane had an agony of apprehension in
her face. "You -must not linger here. If
Minos learns of your coming — ”

Marlin knew his guess had been right.
That alien Labyrinth whose tunnels curved
in time had brought them four thousand
years into the past.

Ill

P REYDER had taken the shock of realiza-
tion even more than Marlin, for the
Nazi had no mental preparation for it. His
•widened eyes turned from the incredible
vista outside to glare at Luane.

"Knossos? That’s not Knossos!” he
snapped. "What kind of trick is this?
Where have you brought us?”

His raised rifle menaced her. “Answer,
or I’ll—”

Luane made no movement. But the golden
snakes that entwined her arms suddenly
moved, with a swiftness beyond belief.

They shot like flying shafts of gold
through the air toward the Nazi. They
whipped around Preyder’s neck and tight-
ened.

The Nazi staggered, clawing the air, drop-
ping the gun as his face went purple. "Tlie
other German recoiled with a c^ of horror.

"Loose the man, my daughter!” com-
manded a deep, urgent voice.

Marlin whirled. The man who had en-
tered the hall was dressed in the long cloak
of ancient Crete, a w'hite garment edged
with black designs.

His hair was thin and gray. The face was
the withered countenance of an old man.
But the eyes, black, glowing, afire with life
and inteligence, were ageless.

. Luane uttered a low, honeyed note of
sound. The golden snakes ceased to tighten
around Preyder’s neck. They entwined with
blurring speed and leaped back onto Luane’s
upraised arms, coiling lovingly around them.
The old man had advanced. His deep eyes
widened as they looked at Marlin and the
Nazis. "Then there was someone in the
Labyrinth, as the Minotaur’s outcries be-
tokened?” he said swiftly to the girl.

'Wes, but not Minos’ spies as we thought,”
Luane answered. "These are men from
across time. The Labyrinth has been opened!"
Daedalus blanched, like a man receiving a
shock of terrible intelligence.

"The La’oyrinth opened?" he whispered.
"But if Minos learns of this, it means — "

Urgent alarm and haste flashed into his
eyes. "Quick, to my laboratory! Minos’
mental vision cannot see there!"

Marlin dazedly allowed himself to be
hustled with the other two through a series
of connecting halls and corridors, by Dae-
dalus and his daughter. The stunned Prey-
der attempted no further resistance.

The Arnerican glimpsed a few white-
robed men servitors of the temple, Cretans
who stared at them wonderingly. ’Then they
were led into a small, windowless room of
octagonal shape, whose walls were sheets of
dull lead. It was illuminated by silver lamps.
The room was a laboratory; but not such a
one as he had known in his own time.

Many instruments were of familiar de-
sign — crucibles, retorts and other chemical
apparatus. But tliere were also ancient alem-
bics, charcoal braziers, twisted glass tubes
through which bubbled yellow gases, metal
geometrical models of outlandish alienage
tliat made the eye aclie to look at.

"Not even Minos’ mental vision can pene-
trate these walls of lead,” muttered Daeda-
lus. "But if he should already have learned
that the Labyrinth had been opened — ’’

S UPREME apprehension was in his face
and in Luane’s. Marlin recognized their
dread, even though he was mystified by it.

"You built that Labyrinth?” Marlin said
hoarsely to the old Cretan. "Legends for
four thousand years have spoken of Daedalus
as its builder.”

"Four thousand years?” murmured the
old man. "Then you come from that far
in future time?”

Preyder was staring wildly. "Does it mean
that we came in that hellish maze through
thne?" he husked to the American.

Marlin nodded shakenly. "We’re in
ancient Crete. How, I don’t know. Except
that that maze is a miracle of super-geometry
that twists in four dimensions. Legend has
spoken of it for forty centuries, and of the
Minotaurs — "

Daedalus broke in. "The Minotaurs were

PRIESTESS OF THE LABYRINTH

not of my creation, stranger. Minos made
those monsters, out of men. And they tied
to me for refuge, and I gave it to them.”
Marlin’s brain reeled. "I don’t understand
all this. In my day, it was only wild myth.”
Preyder’s eyes had begun to gleam. "What
a secret to stumble upon! A pathway into
past time!”

Luane was at her father’s side, her blue
eyes troubledly surveying the three men
as her father rapidly spoke.

"I cannot explain everything to you,”
Daedalus said. "But this I must tell you —
your coming has threatened Knossos and all
our world with dark evil. Yes, and because
you have penetrated the Labyrinth and come
here, that evil danger threatens even your
own far future age!”

"Danger? Danger from what?” de-
manded Marlin, his thin young face puzzled.

"From Minos,” came the answer. "The
king who is lord of Crete and who wields a
dark wisdom equalling my own. And who is
evil incarnate in his purposes!”

He almost spat the words. And Marlin
began to remember now that the old legends
spoke of Minos the king and Daedalus the
scientist as deadly enemies — enemies wield-
ing Ihe magic of ancient wisdom.

"We have science, we of Crete,” Daedalus
was saying. "Perhaps not the same as your
science of the future. I perceive by your
dress and weapons that you have mastered
many material forces. We have concentrated
on other problems, on the subtle laws of
time and space and life.

"Greatest of scientists in our land are
Minos, hereditary king, and I, high priest of
this Temple of Wisdom. But the researches
of Minos have always been unholy. For he
has long cherished a black, evil purpose.

"Minos has always v/ished to breed new,
monstrous, semi-human races who would
serve him and extend his power over all the
earth! Years ago, he sought for the ultimate
seeds of life, the tiny germs that control
every aspect of a living creature’s growth and
formation,

"He found those controlling germs of
life, and bred horrible new creatures from
human stock. Men who had only a travesty
of human shape, whom the experiments of
Minos had caused to grow into bestial forms!
Yes, the beast-headed monsters whom you
saw in the Labyrinth, the poor mockeries of

humanities whom Minos called his Mino-
taurs!

"Those creatures escaped their master and
came to me. They hoped that I could make
them human. But I could not. I could only
give them refuge here and refuse to return
them to Minos. But I resolved that Minos
should make no more Cretans into such
monsters!

"I told Minos that if he took any more
Cretans to create unlioly races, I would raise
the whole Cretan people against him 'oy
telling them just what he was doing! He
had to desist, but from that time forward
Minos has hated me.”

Marlin was horrified. So this was why
horror had clung to the name of Minos lot
forty centuries!

T he Cretan sorcerer-king had engaged in
blackly evil genetic experiments in his
efforts to create new monstrous races to but-
tress his power!

Daedalus was continuing urgently. "I was
then engaged in a great experiment of my
own. I believed that I could create a super-
geometrical pattern that would enter four
dimensions and thus would penetrate time,
past and future. Beneath this Temple, I buiit
the Labyrinth.

"I pierced thus into other ages. I looked
forth, and saw Knossos as it will be in future
ages, dead and ruined. I looked even farther
and saw strange things of Earth to be tliat
even you do not know.

"But then Minos learned of my achieve-
ment. He came to me. He wished me to let
him use the Labyrintli. My threat to tell the
people had prevented him from using any
more Cretans for his hideous life-experi-
ments. He proposed to use the Labyrinth
to raid future ages for human subjects!

"I refused! I sealed up every outlet of the
Labyrinth into future ages, so that it could
not be used. Minos and Pasiphae and their
evil followers, much as they wished, could
not hope to find the sealed openings of the
Labyrinth even had they taken possession
of it by force and overcome the Minotaurs
whom I let dwell in it.”

Daedalus’ heavy voice rang with dread
foreboding as he concluded his rapid recital.

"But if Minos learns now that the Laby-
rinth has been opened from outside our time,
then he would move at once to seize it and

WEIRD TALES

use it as a roadway for the raiding of future

ages!"

Marlin stared incredulously. “Then what
do you intend to do.^ With us?”

I.uane answ'ered urgently. "Father, they
must go back through the Labyrinth to their
own time, and the Labyrinth must be sealed
again.”

Daedalus nodded anxiously. “That is the
only solution. But first, we must be sure
that Minos is not watching — ”

Preyder broke in eagerly. "Wait! I could
help you to conquer Minos!”

Marlin looked at the Nazi in sharp dis-
trust. Preyder was excitedly explaining to
the old scientist and the girl.

“In my own future age,” the Nazi de-
clared, "this island of Crete is held by my
countrymen, the Germans. They are de-
fending it against a motley horde of nations
who attacked us. Our soldiers could come
through the Labyrinth to this time, and help
you sweep Minos from the throne!”

Preyder added eagerly, “In return, we’d
.ask only the privilege of taking refuge in
this time if our enemies invade the island
— of taking refuge merely until we can go
back and counter-attack them by surprise.”
Alarlin gasped at the hellish audacity' of
the Nazi's plan. He saw instantly its terrific
menace to the Allied cause.

The Allied forces, sooner or later, would
invade Crete. If the Germans could retreat
through the Labyrinth to this past age, they
could wait until a favorable moment and
mount a sudden counter-attack of stunning
surprise. An ambush from time!

“Don’t believe him!” Marlin cried to the
two Cretans. “His people are not defending
the island — they invaded it and now' oppress
its inhabitants, and my country and others
are seeking to liberate it!”

“A lie,” said Preyder flatly. "This Ameri-
can is of my nation’s enemies, and that is
v/hy he twists the truth.”

Daedalus spoke sternly. “I know nothing
of the wars in y'our future age, nor do I wish
to laiow them. I do know that you three
must all return through the Labyrinth to your
ow'n time as quickly as possible.”

The old scientist added meaningly, “I
shall use hypnotic means to wipe all memory
of it from your minds before you are thrust
out of the La’oyrinth. And I shall seal it
again, so that no others may come through.

And this must be done at once, before Minos
learns that it was ever opened.”

“But my people can offer you riches and
power for your alliance!” Preyder persisted.

Daedalus looked icily at the Nazi. “Minos
offered me power and riches, and I refused.
No, you go back to your own time!”

He turned toward his daughter. “We shall
take them at once, Luane. But first—”

He stopped. Preyder, turning away to a
little distance, had suddenly whipped out
his revolver and was covering Luane with it.

“This weapon kills instantly,” snapped
the Nazi. “If those serpents of yours move
this time, you’ll die at once.”

Daedalus and Luane were frozen, and so
for the moment was Marlin.

"There is a secret here that can mean
ultimate victory for the Reich,” Preyder went
on harshly to the old Cretan scientist.
“You’re going to help me make use of it,
or your daughter will pay the penalty.”
Marlin jumped! He had been tensing
himself for the last few seconds and he
swept toward Preyder in a low, flying tackle.

The man Blaun was too dazed by events
to act quickly. But Preyder whirled with
wolf-like swiftness and shot.

The gun went off almost in Marlin’s face.
He felt a scorching blast of flame, a terrific
blow, and then nothing.

M arlin came back to consciousness
with the salt stickiness of dried blood
on his forehead and a feeling that his skull
had split apart He opened his eyes to find
that he lay on the floor of the octagonal
laboratory. 'The silver lamps still glowed
softly, but the room was silent.

He stumbled up and then saw the
withered, prostrate figure of Daedalus ly-
ing nearby. The old Cretan scientist was
sprawled in front of a silver cabinet of
instruments, blood seeping from a bullet
wound in his side.

Marlin looked wildly around. The two
Nazis and the girl Luane w'ere gone.

He bent and frantically tried to revive the
old Cretan. "What happened? Where is
Preyder?”

Daedalus appeared mortally wounded.
Yet the old scientist’s eyes opened, and he
whispered faintly.

PRIESTESS OF THE LABYRINTH

"The phial of blue liquid,” he murmured
hoarsely. "In the cabinet — ”

Marlin stumbled to the silver cabinet and
searched hastily. There were many strange-
looking instruments and vessels in it. But
he soon found a flat, twisted-necked glass
phial of bright blue fluid.

He returned quickly with it to the Cretan.
"Break the neck and pour the liquid into
my wound,” whispered Daedalus.

Marlin obeyed, drawing the old man’s
cloak aside and letting the blue drug drip
into the bullet-hole in the withered flesh.

The results amazed him. The lips of the
wound drew together as though from a
super-clotting agent affecting tissues as weU
as blood. And strength and life seemed to
pour back into Daedalus’ pallid face.

The Cretan sat up in a few moments.
There was an agony of dread in his wide eyes
as he looked up at Marlin.

"Your enemy left us both for dead!” he
exclaimed. "After he struck you down with
his weapon, he turned it upon me also as I
was rushing to call the Minotaurs against
him!”

Marlin raised an unsteady hand to his
head. Preyder’s bullet had grazed his skull
only, but the wound that had stunned him
would have been interpreted by the Nazi as
a fatal one.

"As consciousness left me,” Daedalus was
continuing hoarsely, "I heard the man you
call Preyder and the other one binding and
gagging Luane. They were going with her
to Minos! Your enemy plans to make with
Minos the bargain that he could not make
with me!”

Terribie apprehension gripped Marlin at
this information. He saw again all the dread
possibilities if Preyder succeeded in turning
the unearthly Labyrinth into a weapon of
Nazi strategy.

Preyder’s reasoning was clear. The Nazi
must have allies in this ancient time-v/orld
if his compatriots were to use the Labyrinth.
Daedalus had refused the unholy alliance.
So he had gone to Minos, who also desired
to use the road through time for evil pur-
poses.

"But why would he take Luane with
them?” Marlin cried.

"You forget what I told you — that only
Luane and myself know the Labyrinth well
enough to find the openings to other ages,”

Daedalus replied. "They will need Luane to
be their guide.”

"Then without her, they could not use the
Labyrinth?” Marlin exclaimed. 'Then we've
got to get her out of their hands at once!”

Daedalus nodded swiftly. His eyes were
solemn. 'Yes, we must risk all to get Luane
away from tliem and then dose the Laby-
rinth again.”

Rapidly, he thought aloud. "Your enemy
will tell Minos that I am dead. And Minos
will rejoice, and will at once send to seize
this temple so that they may force Luane
to guide them through the Labyrinth.”

"Then, at once, we’ve got to get into
Minos’ palace and free your daughter — and
there’s just tlie two of us, without weapons! ”
Marlin exclaim.ed. He was appalled by the
dire necessity facing them.

"I have weapons, of a certain kind,” mut-
tered Daedalus. He went to the silver cabi-
net, and hurriedly took from it some small
copper instruments which he put in an inner
pocket of his cloak. "Now come with me!”

The old Cretan seemed to have recovered
miraculous strength from the blue drug tha:
had dosed his wound. Marlin stumbled at
his heels, out of the lamptit laboratory' into
the marble halls of the temple.

Night had fallen upon Knossos while thev
lay unconscious. The porticos gave a view
of the great, dark city, its streets splashed
with red torchlight, the lighted wdndows of
Minos’ great palace on the distant hilltop
glaring out over the nighted town and sea.

Thin, vague starlight came through the
openings into the temple halls. Marlin
stumbled over something small and soft and
looked down to discover tliat it was the dead,
crushed body of one of Luane’s little pet
golden serpents. The other lay nearby.

Daedalus had found the bodies of two
of the temple servitors, across the room. The
men had been shot by Preyder and Blaun.
They were naked except for loincloths, their
cloaks missing.

"The Nazis put their cloaks on so that
their strange clothing would not be noticed
going through the city,” muttered Marlin.

"Listen!” Daedalus exclaimed.

A heavy tramp of feet was approaching
the Temple of Wisdom. They glimpsed
a long column of bronze-helmeted soldiers
led by torchbearers coming through the
streets toward them.

WEIRD TALES

"Minos’ guards, coming here to seize the
temple and Labyrinth as I thought!” said tlie
old Cretan.

"Let’s get out of here then before they
find us!” Marlin cried, starting toward the
door.

"Wait!” Daedalus commanded. "We can
do nothing that way. Minos' palace is always
ringed by guards. We could not even ap-
proacli it.’’

"But we’ve got to make the attempt!”
Marlin exclaimed desperately.

"Yes, but not that way. Come with me.”

To the American’s surprise, Daedalus led
him up a spiral stairway that climbed to the
very top of the temple. They emerged onto
its flat roof.

The Temple of Wisdom was a massive
octagon building of great height. Up here
in the windy darkness, they were far above
the torchlit streets of Knossos.

Daedalus went to a small shed-like struc-
ture on the roof, unlocking it and entering.
He returned in a moment, bringing two big
and grotesque-looking devices.

"These are our only means of reaching
and entering Minos’ palace unobserved,” he
declared. "I had kept this invention secret
lest Minos hear of it. Not since my son
Icarus was killed making trial of them, have
I used these wings.”

Marlin stared dumfoundedly at the thing
which Daedalus had handed him. He sud-
denly remembered all those old legends that
told of Daedalus’ invention of a means of
flight and of tlie death of his son in its trial.
For the thing was a pair of big, artificial
wings.

They were broad, batlike pinions six feet
in length, made of a dark, skinlike substance
stretched on a light interior skeleton. The
wings seemed to grow like living ones out
of a flat, heavj^ mass of muscular flesh cov-
ered by gray, lifeless skin. To it was attached
a harness.

"But these wings surely can't enable you
to fly!” Marlin protested incredulously.
"There’s no motive power, no machinery at
all."

"I told you before that our Cretan science
concentrates not on matter and machines but
on the forces of life and space and time,” re-
minded Daedalus. "There is pseudo-life in
these wings and in the powerful muscles that
operate them. It is quiescent now but it

will kindle to awakening when you wear the
wings against your body.”

He showed Marlin by example how to
buckle the strong leather harness around his
shoulders, so that the flat muscle-mass be-
tween the wings was clasped tightly against
his back between the shoulders.

Marlin obeyed unbelievingly. "But it’s
impossible! The things are just lifeless
matter — ”

He broke off suddenly. He had felt an
uncanny twitching of that mass of pseudo-
living muscle clasped against his back.

It was an almost horrible sensation, that
writhing and flexing of powerful tendons
which a minute before had been lax and
dead.

"TTie wings are waking to life from the
kindling aura of your own living flesh!”
Daedalus warned. "When they begin to beat
strongly, run with me along the roof and
launch yourself into the air.”

Marlin felt the flexing of the great arti-
ficial muscles against his back, swiftly in-
creasing in power. A breeze fanned his
cheeks as the great batlike pinions behind
him began to sweep to and fro.

"The wings that Daedalus wore had begun
to flap also. Both men staggered unsteadily
as their threshing wings almost lifted them. .

"Now!” exclaimed the old Cretan. "With
me — we fly!”

He was darting across the roof toward its
edge, his wings now flapping powerfully.

M arlin, feeling more than ever caught
in a fantastic dream, mechanically ran
forward after the other. He was nearly to
the edge of the roof — then he flung him-
self forward into empty space.

He did not fall! Instead, he rocketed for-
ward into the darkness, borne up by the
powerful threshing of the great pinions at
his back.

"Steer upward, like this!” Daedalus’ thin
call reached his ears.

Marlin looked up and saw the old Cretan
against the stars, soaring upward on beating
wings as he extended his upcurved arms
before him like a rudder. The American
imitated the action with his own arms, and
rose rapidly until he was flying close beside
Daedalus.

Marlin looked down. They were high
above the dark streets and winking torches

PRIESTESS OF THE LABYRINTH

of Knossos. Down to the right lay the black
harbor and the lanterns of gliding galleys.
From below, he knew, they could not be seen
except as batlike shadows against the stars.

He felt a wild thrill as the throbbing
wings at his back bore him onw'ard with
Daedalus through the upper night, the chill
wind roaring around him and hammering
at his face.

'Tve flown a lot in my own time, but this
is different and better!” he called.

"Yes, but the wings have their limits,”
warned Daedalus. "They can fly only a few
hours witliout rest — then their pseudo-life
dies and they collapse. It was so my son
Icarus died, trj’ing too long a flight.”

The massive palace of Minos loomed up
on its distant hilltop, ahead of them. The
old Cretan soared still higher, until at last
they were a thousand feet above the flat
roof of the monster marble structure.

Then he turned, using arms and legs as
rudder, and Marlin imitated him. They be-
garl to glide down through the darkness to-
ward the palace roof.

"Be ready to unharness the wings the mo-
ment we land!” cautioned Daedalus.

Marlin glimpsed bronze-armored guards
stationed at every entrance of the great royal
structure. But there was no one on the roof.
Who would expect intruders from the sky?

His arms extended dowmw'ard like the
Cretan’s, he planed down through the dark-
ness until his feet touched the roof. He had
the harness of the wings already unbuckled,
and instantly he slipped it off.

He sprawled on his face on the roof from
the shock of the alighting. When he piclced
himself up, he found that the wings he had
hastily discarded had at once ceased their
flapping. The strange pseudo-life of their
artificial muscles could only operate when in
close contact with real life.

Daedalus had landed more deftly. For a
moment, they listened. There were dim
sounds from the palace beneath them, but
no sound that betokened discovery of them.

The old scientist handed Marlin a long,
sharp, bronze dagger. "You may need this
— I have other weapons. Now come with
me.”

H iding the lax and lifeless pair of
wings in the shadow of the parapet that
bounded the roof, Daedalus then began a

careful search along that low, massive wail.

It was constructed of huge marble blocks.
The Cretan finally fixed upon one of these.
He groped at it with his fingers, then pulled.
The great block swung silently aside, dis-
closing a black opening that led down inside
the great wall of the building.

Daedalus turned to the American. "I was
the architect of Minos’ palace,” he explained
in a whisper. "I thank the gods now for that,
for I know every secret passageway that the
tyrant had built into its walls.”

He added, "this is the only road by which
we can hope to find Luane. If we succeed
in doing so, we shall return by this same
way and then when you have gone b.ack
through the Labyrinth I shall close it for-
ever.”

The Cretan disappeared down into the
black opening. Marlin, following, found that
there w'as a narrow, steep stair inside the
v.'all.

They went down many steps, tlren along
a cr.tmped passage. Daedalus stopped, ap-
plied his eye to a tiny aperture in the inner
wall.

"They would not have her in the throne-
room,” he murmured. "We must search
further.”

Marlin, lingering a moment to look
through the little aperture, saw a vast, torch-
lit hall paved with red and white gypsum
Slabs. Its walls were brilliantly painted with
figures of wild bulls and Hons, and swarthy,
armored Cretan soldiers stood beside a mas*'
sive, empty throne.

Daedalus led onward, seeming to kno's^'
his way without hesitation through the cun-
ning hidden passages of the walls. Presently
he stopped again at a tiny loophole.

"These are Minos’ apartments,” he began
to whisper, then suddenly stiffened. His thin
hand gripped Marlin’s arm. "Luane is
here! And Minos and Pasiphae, and your
enemy — ”

Marlin almost crowded him bodily from
the tiny aperture, to see. He looked this time
into a mucli smaller room, similarly paved
in red and white, hung with brilliant silks,
illuminated by swinging lamps.

He instantly saw Luane. The fair-haired
Cretan girl sat in a high chair of carved
wood, bound to it by hide thongs. Her face
was very white but there was defiance and
hatred in her blue eyes.

WEIRD TALES

She was looking bitterly at the others in
tile room. Preyder, fantastically incongruous
in his drab modern uniform, stood beneath
the central lamp. The man Blaun, rifle in
hand, was staring from the side of the room
where a half-dozen watchful Cretan war-
riors were stationed.

"It means power unlimited for you over
your world, and for my nation over the
world of our time!” Preyder was saying
eagerly in his halting Attic.

Tlie Nazi officer was speaking to the
Cretan man and woman who sat in massive
silver chairs at the far side of the room.

"Minos and the queen Pasiphae!” Daeda-
lus muttered in Marlin’s ear. "Your enemy
has made his bargain with them!”

Minos was well over middle age, but his
long hair and flowdng beard were raven
black. His vulpine face, dead white as that
of a corpse, was a fitting setting for the
infinitely cunning eyes with whicli he looked
at the enthusiastic Nazi. His attire was a
rich, gold-worked silken cloak.

The woman was far different. Pasiphae
looked slim as Luane, and as young. But
when Marlin glanced at her bold eyes he
revised estimates of her age. There were un-
clean depths in those eyes. Not even the lush
beauty of her figure in its clinging green
silks could banish that taint.

Minos, stroking his beard with jewelled
fingers, asked the Nazi a question in a
hoarse, thick voice.

"If your nation is so powerful in its own
time, why are you so hard-pressed by enemies
that you need the Labyrinth as refuge?”

"It will be only a temporary refuge,”
Preyder answered quickly. "We Germans
will merely retreat through it to this time
for a period, and then issue forth again in
surprise attack to crush our enemies.”

He added, "And even if our enemies
should gain victory in this whole war, we
can use the Labyrinth to defeat them ulti-
mately. For we can retreat through it to
this time, secretly amass forces here for an-
other w'ar, and issue forth to conquer out
world by an attack of complete surprise.”

Marlin was aghast. For the first time, he
realized the full scope of Preyder’s schem-
ing, It was not merely the possession of
Crete which formed the stake for which the
Nazi was plotting.

it w.as a chance for Germany to launch a

third world war upon mankind. Preyder,
like most other Nazis, must realize the in-
evitable triumph of the Allies. But when
that triumph came, the Nazis could secretly
gather forces and prepare for a new assault
on civilization by taking refuge through the
Labyrinth in this age of the past!

T he king Minos nodded his head indif-
ferently at the Nazi’s explanation.
"Your nation and its W'ars in the future
world mean little to me,” he declared. "But
I need an inexhaustible supply of human
subjects to breed into the beast-races which
can extend my power over all this world.
And if I use people of this time as subjects,
they will rise against me.”

"Germany will furnish you as many hu-
man captives as you need from the races
we shall conquer when our triumph is com-
plete,” Preyder promised.

"Then it is agreed between us,” Minos
said. "Tomorrow' we will enter the Laby-
rinth, with sufficient warriors to slay the
Minotaurs who haunt it. I bred the creatures
but they hate me for it and w'ere fanatically
devoted to Daedalus, so they will have to be
killed.

"Now that Daedalus is dead,” he went
on, "the priestess Luane is the only one who
can guide us through the Labyrinth to the
tunnels that open onto future ages.”

Luane spoke in a low, throbbing voice. "1
will never guide you, so that you may work
evil on the future world and on this one.”
Minos smiled tolerantly, fingering his
beard. "Torture will change your mind.
There are devices in my laboratories which
will bring you whimpering to my feet in
submission.”

Marlin turned frantically from the peep-
hole to Daedalus. The old Cretan had drawn
from his cloak one of the small instruments
he had brought with him, and was bending
over it in the darkness.

"We’ve got to get in there somehow!”
Marlin whispered hoarsely. "At the least,
I’ve got to kill that devil Preyder!”

"There is a secret door beneath the loop-
hole which can be swung open,” Daedalus
whispered swiftly. "But not yet! It would
be useless to rush out onto the swords of
Minos’ guards.”

PRIESTESS OF THE LABYRINTH

He was fumbling with the little instru-
ment. It was a circular copper frame in
which four curious black prisms revolved on
an axle around a larger black prism whose
facets were cut in a baffling design. The old
Cretan was spinning the rotating prisms
rapidly around the central one.

"I told you that I was not witlrout weapons
of a certain kind,” he muttered. "Wait!”

"But there’s no time to wait!” Marlin pro-
tested wildly. "If we — ”

His words froze on his lips. An uncanny
thing was happening. The prisms were rotat-
ing so fast that they could be seen only as
black blur. And that blur of blackness was
spreading.

It was spreading outward like water flow-
ing from a fountain — a fountain of utter
darkness.

In the dim light that came through
tlie loophole of the wall, Marlin could see
that flowing darkness seeping out through
the solid wall itself, expanding in all di-
rections.

"Wait until the darkness grips the cham-
ber, then pull open the door by the handles
below the loophole!” Daedalus whispered.
"You’ll have a chance to snatch Luane back
in here, in the dark!”

A t that moment, Marlin standing by
the loophole with one hand gripping
the stone handles below it and the other
grasping his long dagger, he heard a sharp
cry from inside Minos’ cliamber.

A Cretan captain in plumed helmet and
bronze had burst into the room from a door
opposite. He ran toward Minos.

"Highness, my warriors and I seized the
Temple of Wisdom as you ordered but we
did not find Daedalus’ body in it!” he re-
ported.

Minos’ vulpine face raged and he leaped
to his feet, '"rhen he is not dead, as you
told me!” he hissed at Preyder.

"He must be dead!” Preyder declared
bewilderedly. "I shot him myself — ”

Minos’ furious face stiflfened suddenly as
he looked beyond the Nazi. The expanding
cloud of darkness, bursting through the solid
wall, had already engulfed half of the lamp-
lit chamber.

"Daedalus’ darkness-magic!” yelled the
king. "He’s here! Guards!”

Even as the bewildered Cretan guards ran

forward, the darkness expanded to fill the
whole chamber.

Instantly Marlin pulled hard, felt the
heavy stones slide inward. He burst through
the aperture into the chamber. He was in
absolute, utter pitch-darkness, every r.iy of
light blotted out by Daedalus’ apparatu.s.

He had already taken the bearings of
every object in the chamber and he plunged
straight toward the chair in which Luane
sat bound.

"Luane, it’s your father and I!” he whis-
pered as his dagger sliced the hide thongs
that bound her to the chair.

He heard her sob of relief as he pulled
her to her feet. Minos was raging in the
darkness, Preyder was yelling furiously to
Blaun.

Marlin, lunging back with Luane through
the darkness, collided with a uniform-clad
man and struck with his dagger in wild hope
that it was Preyder. But it was Blaun’s
throaty death-cry that shuddered out.

“Daedalus or his friends are in this cham-
ber!” bellow'ed Minos’ voice. "Range around
the walls and link hands!”

But Marlin was already thrusting Luane
through the unseen door into the w’all. He
felt the stones slide shut as Daedalus closed
them.

"Up to the roof at once!” Daedalus ex-
claimed urgently. "The darkness will die as
the prisms stop spinning.”

"There’s no escape from the roof!” Luane
gasped as they ran. "We’ll be trapped.”

“We have the wings there,” answered her
father swiftly. "They can carry double
weight for a short distance. We must get
back to the temple and close the Labyrinth.”

They emerged onto the roof, beneath the
stars. But now the whole great palace was
alive with noises of alarm beneath them.
They heard men rushing out from it, heard
Minos shouting.

"They’ve slipped away! Bat they’ll make
for the Labyrinth. Quick, to the 'Temple!”

Daedalus and Marlin had grabbed up the
lax wings and were buckling on the
harnesses.

"You must carry Luane, for my arms are
not strong enough to hold her,” the Cretan
said swiftly. "Now — fly!”

Their wings were already beginning to
flap strongly as that weird pseudo-life again
awoke in their artificial muscles

WEIRD TALES

Grippifig Luane’s slight figure in his arms,
Marlin ran with the old Cretan along the
roof and then leaped wildly upward.

For a terrible moment, he felt himself
falling backward. The added weight of the
girl seemed pulling him down. Then his
wings seemed to flap even more powerfully
against the drag, and he soared heavily up
and outward from the palace roof.

As he and his burden launched outward
with Daedalus into the dark sky, he glimpsed
mounted horsemen riding out of a torchlit
court of the palace. And Minos and Preyder
were in their van.

"We’ll reach the Temple ahead of them!”
called Daedalus' thin voice over the rush of
the wind. "But Minos’ guards are already in
possession of it!”

T he octagonal white pile of the Tem-
ple of Wisdom was looming up close
ahead, now. They rushed down toward the
roof. Marlin landing heavily and spilling the
girl from his arms.

She was up instantly, helping him un-
harness the wings from his shoulders. Dae-
dalus reached their side.

"Bring the wings with you, for we must
not leave them for Minos,” he warned.

He lingered a moment to peer down over
the edge of the roof. "The guards posted
around the Temple did not see us,” he said
Quickly. "If there are none inside, we can
get to the Labyrinth and close it forever.”
Luane clung to her father in sudden hor-
ror. "But there is only one way in which
the Labyrinth can be closed forever!”

"And that is the way that must be used,
Luane,” Daedalus said solemnly. "There’s
no time for argument! Come quickly!”

They went down the spiral stair. Marlin
expecting every moment to hear the horse-
men of Minos and Preyder gallop up to the
Temple.

The dark halls of the ground level were
deserted except for the dead servitors who
still lay there. Daedalus rapidly led the way
on down the stair, down to that under-
ground, vault-like room in which was the
silver door that was entrance to the Laby-
rinth.

The vault was aflare with torchlight and
six Cretan warriors were on guard in it!
A.nd the Cretans instantly saw the three as
tliey emerged from the stair.

"Daedalus! The sorcerer is alive!” yelled
the first warrior to glimpse them, and ran
toward them raising his double-bladed axe.

Marlin thrust the wings he carried into
Luane’s hand and leaped in front of her and
the old scientist.

The axe came down toward him in a sav-
age stroke. But the fine-trained reactions of
a fighter-pilot saved the American. He
swerved, and as the axe whistled past him
he struck viciously with his long dagger.

The blade buried in the Cretan’s neck
between chin and breast-plate and he went
down. Marlin snatched up the heavy axe to
face the other Cretans who were rushing
forward.

"Back onto the stair!” he yelled over his
shoulder to Luane and Daedalus. On the
narrow stair, he’d have a slim chance for
defense.

But as his raised axe fended the weapons
of the attacking warriors. Marlin glimpsed
Luane darting past him and past the warriors
toward the silver door of the Labyrinth.

Had the Cretan soldiers not hampered
each other by the closeness of their attack,
Marlin must have died in the first moment.
Even as it was, his clumsy use of the axe
barely parried the weapons that struck at
him.

He knew this unequal battle must end
swiftly, and the knowledge was made sud-
denly more bitter in his mind by the sound
of trampling hoofs and shouts that came
dimly from above. Preyder and Minos had
arrived with their horsemen.

Then a weird, high call floated through
the battle-noisy vault. Luane had opened
the silver door and was calling that strange
cry down into the dark depths of the Laby-
rinth.

"Gods — -the Minotaurs!” screamed one of
the Cretan warriors in the back of the at-
tackers.

T he monstrous, beast-headed creatures,
the hideous things that Minos had bred
from man, was pouring up out of the Laby-
rinth in answer to Luane’s summons.

The Cretans, overcome by superstitious
horror of these monsters whom all Knossos
whispered of and dreaded, tried frantically
to flee.

They had no chance. Seven or eight of
the ghastly Minotaurs were in the room,

PRIESTESS OF THE LABYRINTH

their bull-bellows rocking the walls as they
charged till horns ripped into flesh.

"They are here!” yelled a hoarse voice
from high up on the stair. "After them!”

A gun cracked, a startlingly anadironistic
sound, and a bullet sang off the wall close
by Marlin.

The American looked up and saw Prey-
der, revolver in hand, racing down with
Minos toward them at the head of a mass
of armored warriors.

"Into the Labyrinth, quick!” panted Dae-
dalus, dragging the American toward the
silver door. Luane was calling the Minotaurs.

Then they were in the dark, winding tun-
nels of the great four-dimensional maze, tlie
shaggy, monstrous horde of the Minotaurs
behind them as they ran forward.

Daedalus’ strength seemed failing fast.
"We must — get to the heart of the Laby-
rinth,” he gasped. "Only there can it be
closed permanently.”

Tordilight from behind reddened the
corridors at their back, and wolf-voices
shouting sent fierce echoes through the curv-
ing ways.

"Minos has brought scores of his men —
they’ll search every tunnel until they find
us!” Marlin husked.

The Minotaurs were sounding their mind-
crushing bellow, seeking fiercely to turn back
and give battle to the pursuers. But Daeda-
lus urged his monstrous followers on.

"I shall need them, to close the Laby-
rinth,” he gasped. "We are almost at its
heart.”

The radiant jewel on Luane’s forehead
had dimly lighted their way. But now they
came from the curving tunnels into a high,
round room of stone that seemed the very
core of the fantastic maze.

A giant pillar of cylindrical stone blocks
rose at the center of this shadowy fane, sup-
porting a curving roof. And it seemed to
Marlin’s dazed mind that that great, carven
pillar was slowly turning.

Daedalus laid his hand upon it.

"'This pillar is the keystone of the entire
labyrinth,” he said. And tlien, to the Mino-
taurs, "We must pull out the lowest block
of the pillar!”

Obediently, those giant creatures laid
hands upon the block that formed the lowest
section of the giant column. This basic block
was set in a wide groove in the stone floor.

so that it might be slid aside to collapse the
entire pillar if desired. But even the huge
strength of the beast-men could only budge
it imperceptibly.

Daedalus spoke hoarsely to Luane. "You
must not stay here, daughter. You must
guide our friend back out through the tun-
nels to his own time, before the Labyrinth
closes.”

She clung to him in an agony of weeping.
"No! I stay here to die with you!”

"Die?” echoed Marlin. "What’s going to
happen? What are you doing?”

"I am closing the Labyrinth in the only
way in which it can be permanently closed,
by collapsing and destroying its whole
maze!” answered the old Cretan solemnly.
"When I built it, I made provision to do
this should ever the need arise.

"And now the need has arisen! The Laby-
rinth will perish and with it will perish the
plotters who seek to make use of it for evil
purposes. And my poor Minotaurs will die
here with me, for death will be kinder to
them than life.”

"And I too die here with you!” Luane re-
peated wildly. She told Marlin, "Go, make
your escape while there is time!”

"How can he escape when he does not
know his way through the tunnels?” ex-
claimed her father. "You must guide him
and go with him, Luane.”

He held her tear-wet face between his
hands. "Death is almost upon me, in any
case. 'The wound I received was truly mortal
— the drug I used merely closed it but could
not heal it. You must go! And you must
take the wings with you, for they may help
you to escape when you reach the future
world.”

H e thrust them, by a last effort of
strength and command, away from
him toward one of the tunnels. Sobbingly,
Luane led the way into that dark passage.

Marlin glanced back and in the shadows
could just see the old Cretan scientist ex-
horting the giant, faithful Minotaurs who
now were sliding the block farther and
farther from beneath the pillar.

"There is little time!” c.ame Luane’s
choked voice. "We must hurry!”

They stumbled around the dizzying quad-
ruple curves of the mysterious maze, the girl
leading the way, carrying the lax wings.

WEIRD TALES

And finally, Marlin glimpsed an opening
ahead and moonlight! He and the girl, a
moment later, stumbled out of the tunnel
into tlie moonlit gorge outside the ruins of
Knossos.

"I’m back in my own time, my own world
again!" Marlin exclaimed hoarsely to the
girl. "A world in which Crete’s civilization
has been dead for forty centuries.”

Tliere came a sudden crashing, prolonged
roar from behind them. The whole cliff
from whose interior they had just emerged
seemed collapsing in upon itself.

Dust rose to veil its broken face, and
the roar died away to silence. Luane sobbed
wildly.

"The Labyrinth — gone forever!” Marlin
husked. "And dead in it, Daedalus and the
Minotaurs, and Minos and Preyder!”

There was a sharp cry from somewhere
in the distance — a guttural call in German
that was answered by other distant voices.

"The Nazis — ^the collapse of tlie cliff has
attracted their attention and they’ll soon
be here!” Marlin exclaimed. "We’ve got to
get away at once. If these wings will still
work — •”

He and Luane buckled them on. A minute
later, the pseudo-living pinions began their
powerful threshing.

Marlin and the Cretan girl ran along the
gorge and leaped, soaring up into the moon-
light. He heard a startled exclamation from
somewhere below', a wild cry that receded as
he and Luane flew on.

they soared higher, and Marlin headed
-L southward across the dark, narrow mass
of Crete.

"Can we reach Africa with tliese?” he
asked the girl flying beside him.

"I fear not,” she answered. "It is too far.
Nor do I care for life now. ’This is not my
world."

"Luane, it’s going to be our world to-
ether if we can escape,” he told her, his
eart in the words.

In the moonlight, the girl flying beside
him looked at him and her pale, tear-stained
face softened.

They soon were passing over the southern
shore of Crete, winging on over the moon-
silvered Mediterranean tow'ard distant

Africa. But in the next hour, as the flap-
ping wings beat ever more slowly and
tiredly, Marlin knew that they would neve:
make that distance.

He scanned the moonlit sea desperately
for a ship. And finally, when the tiring
wings were letting them fall lower and
lower toward the sea, he glimpsed a distant
black dot on the silver water.

"If we can reach that ship we’re safe,
Luane! It must be an Allied craft for there
are no others in these waters.”

They W'ere less than a mile from the
ship and could see it as a destroyer knifing
the waves w'estward, when Marlin’s wings
w'ent dead upon his bade. He shot dow-n
like a stone to the w’ater below.

The impact stunned him. He came to
himself and found he w'as floating, sup-
ported by Luane.

"I came down after you and dragged you
to the surface,” she gasped. "But I had to
discard our wings before they dragged us
both back under.”

"Luane, we were seen falling!” Marlin
cried joyfully. 'That destroyer is turning
toward us!”

It was a much-puzzled British naval offi-
cer who greeted the American pilot and the
strangely-clad girl whom his boat-crew' had
just pulled out of the sea.

"We saw you jumping,” he told Marlin,
"but your parachutes didn’t seem to be work-
ing right and we didn’t hear your plane at
all.”

"My plane w'as hit by a shell over Candia
and its motor was dead,” Marlin told him.
"This girl is a refugee from Crete I was
bringing back.”

The explanation satisfied the officer. It
would satisfy everyone, Marlin knew, and
it was the explanation he would alw'ays have
to give them about what had happened to
him.

No one would believe the truth, if he
tried to tell it.

Besides, he thought, the explanation was
true enough. ’The girl whom he was holding
closely and protectively in his arms was a
refugee from Crete, in fact. ’There was no
one who would guess that she came from the
Crete, not of 1944, but of four thousand
years ago.

oAiip

-in-a-Bottle

Ify P. SCHUYLER MILLER

REMEMBERED the place at once.

I was nearly ten when I first saw it.
I was with my father, on one of our
exploring trips into the old part of town,
down by the river. In his own boyhood it
had still been a respectable if run-down dis-
trict of small shops and rickety old frame
houses. He had worked there for a ship
chandler until he had money enough to go
to college, and on our rambles we would
often meet old men and draggled, slatternly
women who remembered him. Many is the
Saturday afternoon I have spent in the dark

corner of some fly-blown bar, a violently
colored soft drink untouched in the thick
mug before me, while I listened to the en-
trancing flow of memories these strange ac-
quaintances could draw up out of my father’s
past.

It was on one of these excursions, shortly
before my tenth birthday, that we came upon
a street which even he had never seen be-
fore. It was little more than a slit between
two cruinbling warehouses, with a dim gas-
lamp halfway down its crooked length. It
catne out, as we discovered, near the end of

Heading by MATT FOX

Thefe were many grimy l:Uie shops on those squalid back streets hut
none so strange as this

WEIRD TALES

the alley which runs behind the Portuguese
section along Walnut Street. One side was
a solid brick wall, warehouse joined to ware-
house for perhaps a hundred yards. On the
other was a narrow sidewalk of cracked flag-
stones, and the windows of a row of shabby
shops, most of them empty.

We might have passed it, for we were
on our way to the little triangular plot of
grass under the old chestnut, where Grand
and Beekman come down to the river, and
the chess-players meet to squabble amicably
over their pipes and their beer of a Satur-
day night. But as we passed its river end
the lamp came on, and its sudden glow in
the depths of that black crevice caught my
eye. I pulled at my father’s coat, and we
stopped to look. I wonder now, sometimes,
how and by whom that lamp was lit.

The shop door was directly under the
light. We might not have seen it otherwise,
although I have a feeling it was meant to
be seen. Even in the dark it would have
had a way of standing out. The flags in
front of its door were clean, and the little
square panes in its low front window shone.
It had a scrubbed look, which grew even
more apparent as we hurried toward it past
the broken stoops and dingy plate glass of
its neighbors.

It was my discover)^ and by the rules of
the game I was the first to open the door. But
! stopped first to look at it, for it was a
strange place to find in those surroundings.
The street was old, but most of the build-
ings dated from the turn of the century, be-
fore the warehouses had gone up. They had
the seedy straightness of the mauve era, cor-
rupted now by the dry rot of poverty and
neglect, but this place had a jolly brown
lock about it that went straight back into
my picture-memories of Dickens’ London.
It was like the stern of a galleon crowded
between grimy barges. Its window, as I
have said, was low and wide with many
little square panes of heavy greenish glass
set in lead. Tlie flagstones in front of it
were spotless, and the granite curbing with
its carved numerals and even the cobbles out
to the center of the lane had been scrubbed
until they shone.

That, as we sav/ it first, was Number 52
Manderly Lane.

The street-lamp shone dov.'h on its door-

step, but a warmer, mellower light was shin-
ing through the wavery old glass of its queer
window. I think it was the first oil light
that I had ever seen. I know I pressed my
nose against the clearest of the little panes
to peer inside before I opened the great
oaken door. And what I saw was encliant-
ment.

TN 'THE four years since my mother died
and my aunt came to live with us, I had
sat with my father in many a grimy little
shop on these squalid back streets, and their
dirt and stencil and meanness no longer con-
cerned me. I had come to expect it and to
understand it. It was a part of the setting
in which these pinched and tired people
lived out their lives. A few of them had
come up in the world, as he had, chiefly
tlirough political maneuvering or other even
more questionable methods, but not many of
them had lost the lean, wolfish look of hun-
ger and suspicion which had become a part
of them, ingrained as children and nurtured
in youth. Those who had it least were among
my father’s warmest friends.

But this place was different. That was
faery. It was the Old Curiosity Shop — it was
the shop of Stockton’s Magic Egg — it was all
the wonderful places I had found in thc'
dark old books in my father’s library', rolled
up into one and brought alive. It was deep,
and broader than seemed possible from out-
side, with a wide oak counter running from
front to back along the left hand side, and
a great dim tapestry, full of rich color and
magic life, hung on the right hand wall next
the door.

The floor was of wide pine planlcs, sanded
white. The ceiling was low and ribbed with
heavy beams. And the scent of pine and
oak were part of the wonderful rich odor
which welled up around me as I opened the
big door and stepped inside.

It was a faery odor as the shop was a faery
shop. It had all the spices of the Orient in
it, and sandalwood, and myrrh. It had mint
and thyme and lavender. It had worn leather
and burnished copper, and the sharp, clean
smell of bright steel. It had things a boy
of nine could remember only from his
dreams.

Behind the broad counter were cupboards
with small-paned glass doors through which

SHIP-IN-A-BOTTLE

I could dimly make out more wonders than
vi'ere heaped upon the worn red oak. Three
ship’s lamps hung from the ceiling, and their
vellow light and the light of a thidc candle
which stood in a huge hammered iron stick
■DU the counter, were all that lighted the
place. Their mellow glow flowed over the
sleek bales of heavy silk and swatdies of
brocade and crimson velvet, picking out the
fantastic patterns of deep-piled carpets
heaped against the wall under the tapestry,
and caressing the smooth curves of glori-
ously shaped porcelains in ox-blood and
deep jade. They half hid, half showed me
the infinite marvels of an intricately carven
screen in ebony and ivory which closed off
the rear of the store, and the grotesque drol-
lery of the figures on a massive chest which
stood before it, of a family of trollish mario-
nettes dangling against it, and of a set of
chessmen which stood, set out for play, on a
little taboret of inlay and enamel.

These chessmen my father saw, and went
CO them at once while I was still moving in
sheer wonder from one thing to another,
drawing the scent of the place into my lungs,
letting my hungry fingers stray over all the
strangeness spread out for their encliant-
ment. The men were of ivory, black and
red, and of Persian workmanship. I have
them yet, and men who should know say
diat they are very old and fine.

Have I said that as I pushed open the
great door a silver bell tinkled somewhere in
the depths of the shop? I forgot it at once
in the marvels of tlie place, so it was with
a tlirill almost of panic that I realized that
die proprietor was watching us.

I don’t know what I had imagined he
would be like. A wizened dwarf, perhaps,
wracked over with the years and full of
memories. A sleek Eurasian or a Chinese
with a beautiful half-caste girl for his slave.
Or a bearded gnome of a man as jolly as his
shop front and as full of sly magic as its in-
terior. 'We read much the same sort of
thing then that children do now, although
my taste in melodrama may have been a bit
old-fashioned.

I NSTEAD this was a huge man, a brown
man with the puckered line of an old
scar slashing across his throat and clieek, a
man weathered by sea and wind, who would

make two of my father and have room
enough left for a boy as big as myself. He
was of uncertain age — not old certainly, for
his shock of hair was wiry and black, and
not young eitlier — and dressed in sun-
bleached clothes w'ith a pair of rope sandals
on his bare feet.

My father looked him over, sizing him
up as I had seen him gauge other strangers
in these parts before opening conversation.
He was satisfied, apparently, for he inquired
the price of the chessmen and in doing so
brought another surprise.

I suppose that I expected a rolling bass
from so big a man — a man so obviously a
sailor, and one who from his bearing had
been an officer, accustomed to bellowing his
commands above the roar of wind and sea.
But it was small and soft and rasping, as if
he had swallowed it and could not bring it
up again. It made my backbone creep.

"They are not for sale,” he whispered.

I had heard that gambit used before, and
was rather surprised when my father did not
follow it up in the traditional way, but he
turned instead to survey the contents of the
counter and the shelves behind it. The shop-
keeper lifted the iron candlestick and fol-
lowed as he stooped to examine a curious
footstool made from an elephant’s foot, or
fingered a creamy bit of lace.

"The boy has a birthday soon,” my father
said casually. I was listening, you may be
sure, with all my ears. "Perhaps you have
something that he’ll like.”

The man looked at me. He had black eyes
— hard eyes, like some of the bits of carved
stone on his shelves. His face was cut by
hard lines that made deep-bitten gutters
from his hooked nose to the corners of his
wide, cruel mouth. But his voice was as
soft and rustling as his own fine silk.

"Let him look for himself,” he said.
"Here’s a candle for him. And while he
looks I’ll play you for the men.”

' If my father was startled, he never showed
it. He had learned control of his face and
tongue as he had been taught control of his
quick, hard body, of necessity and long ago
in these very streets. "Good,” he said, and
drew from his vest pocket the gold piece he
carried for luck. It was a Greek coin, I
think, or even older. "Call for white.”

Tlie coin spun in the lamplight, and I

WEIRD TALES

heard the man's half-whisper; "Heads.” It
fell on the wooden floor, and my father let
him pick it up. "Heads,” he said softly,
"but I have a liking for the black.”

T hey drew up chairs beside the little
table, and I on my part soon forgot them
in the wonders which tlie candlelight re-
vealed. I stood for a long time, I remem-
ber, examining the tapestry whicli stretched
all the length of the fartlrer wall — ^its fabric
darkened by age, but full of life and color
depicting a history of a mythology which I
could not and still cannot place. I grew
tired of it, and had a moment’s fright as I
caught the empty eyes of a row’ of leering
masks watching me from the rafters above
i'., then I turned back to the clutter on the
long counter and began to rummage through
it for whatever I might find. The cupboards
tempted me, but it was with a queer sensa-
tion that I heard the proprietor’s husky voice:
"Go on, boy — open them.”

It was a long game, I think. I was so
full of the strangeness of everj'thing, and so
desirous of making exactly the right choice
in all that mass of untold wonders, that I
might never in my life have decided what
thing I w'anted most. And then I found
the ship.

I iim sure now it was chance — pure chance
—or if it was fate, a fate more far-reaching
tlian anything we know. I had opened cup-
board after cupboard, holding the heavy
candlestick high to see or setting it down
on the counter behind me to fondle and ex-
plore. There were deep drawers under the
cupboards, and more under the counter, and
1 b.unted through those, finding new won-
ders every moment — trays in which gaudy
butterflies had been inlaid in tropic woods,
trinkets of gold so soft and fine that I could
scar it with my nail, jewels of a hundred
sorts, and the mummies of strange small ani-
mals. One cupboard seemed to stick, and
w hen I pulled it open the whole wall came
with it, leaving a paneled niche almost five
feet deep. In it, set in an iron cradle, was
a great glass bottle — a perfect sphere of thin
green glass — and in it was the ship.

It was an old ship, a square-rigger, perfect
in every detail. Most ship models that I
had seen in the W'aterfront shops were small
and rather cmde, stuffed into rum bottles or

casual flasks which had happened to come
the maker’s way, with more ingenuity than
pride of craftsmanship. This ship was dif-
ferent. Where the routine ship-in-a-bottle
bowled along under full sail, heeling a bit
with the force of the imaginary gale that
stretched its starched or varnished canvas,
this ship lay becalmed with her sails slack
and the sun beating down on her naked
decks. There was not a ripple in the glassy
sea in which she lay. The tiny figures of
seamen, no bigger tlian the nail of my little
finger, stood morosely at their tasks, and on
the bridge a midget captain stared up at me
and shook in my face a threatening arm
which ended in a tiny, shining hook.

I knew then that I wanted that ship more
than I had ever wanted anything in all ray
life before. It wasn’t the flawless crafts-
manship of the thing, or the cunning art
which had sealed it within that seemingly
flawless globe of glass. It was because —
and I say this after thirty years — it was be-
cause I had Jeep in my child's soul the con-
viction tliat this ship was somehow real, that
she sailed somewhere in a real sea, and that
if only she were mine I could somehow’ find
a way of getting aboard her and sailing away
to adventures beyond the dreams of any boy
in all the w'orld.

I turned to call my father. The game was
over, and he stood, an oddly thoughtful ex-
pression on his lean face, staring down at
the final pattern of men. For he had W’on.
The chessmen were his. But the shopkeeper
was looking not at him but at me, and al-
though the light w'as behind him I did not
like at all what I thought was in his face.

I stepped quickly backward. The candle
tilted and hot grease splashed my wrist. I
think my elbow hit the open cupboard door
as I jerked it back, for I felt it give and
heard it close. Then with tigerish speed
the brown man was across the shop, leaning
across the counter. He pulled it open — ^and
there was ho ship there.

I thought there was a threat in his strange
hushed voice. "Well, boy," he whispered,
"your father’s beaten me. What do you
want?”

I set the candle down between us and
backed away. I wanted nothing more at that
moment than to get out into the street again,
where there were lights and people and my

SHIP-IN-A-BOTTLE

father. All the wonder of the place was
ssvept away in an emotion that was as much
guilt as fear, as though I had pried into for-
bidden tilings — for tliat was in his voice.

"N-nothing, sir!" I told him. "Nothing at
all.”

“Nothing?” It was my father. "Non-
sense, Tom. Don’t be a fool. This is a won-
derful place. I’ve done this gentleman out
of some very valuable chessmen, and we
must give him his chance at us. Now — ^what
do you want?”

It was queer how his being tliere changed
everything. There was no more fear and
there was no reason at all for feeling guilty.
A kind of defiance grew up in me in their
stead, and I looked straight into those hard
black eyes and answered.

“I'd like a ship, I think — a ship in a
bottle.”

That’s almost all, except that I got a ship.
I had asked for one, and my father, feeling
rather odd at having won so valuable a prize,
insisted that I choose. I made a long busi-
ness of it, hunting over all the shelves and
tlirough all the cupboards, and at last I chose
a frigate that as I realize now was a master-
piece for all its lifeless, straining sails and
plaster wake. But there was no becalmed
clipper with sun-drenched crew, hung in a
green bubble as broad as my arms could
span. And for a good many years, after we
had moved to another town and I had found
a new school and new friends, and eventu-
ally work, I wondered why . . .

I KNEW the street at once when I saw it
again.

I had been looking for it, as a matter of
fact — not actively, but in a casual sort of
way as I walked the old streets along which
I had trotted with my father thirty years
before. They still played chess of a summer
night in the little park where Beekman meets
the river, but the players I had known were
gone. People in those parts do not forget so
easily, though, and I bought a drink here,
and two or three in another place, and talked
of old times and agreed that the new ones
were decadent and drab. It was near mid-
night of a glorious night full of stars, so I
turned naturally to the river front and
strolled along the empty street with only
my shadow for company, listening to the

slow echo of my footsteps and thinking of
nothing at all but the night.

The street Lamp threw a band of light
across my way, a little brighter than the star-
light. At the same moment I stepped down
from the curb and felt uneven cobbles un-
derfoot, and somehow the two combined
to break through my revery and bring a
memory up through the veil of years. I
looked up, and it was there.

In thirty years the lane had grown dingier
and darker, and the patch of scrubbed flag-
ging stood out even brighter than it had
that night when I was nearly ten. One of
the warehouses had burned some years be-
fore, and the brick escarpment whidi walled
the alley on the left was crumbling and
broken with the black bones of cliarred tim-
bers standing up against tlie night. The
houses I passed were dead and boarded up;
the shop fronts were broken, and the doors
of three or four sagged open. But as I came
to Number 52 it was as though nothing had
changed. Nothing — in thirty years.

There was tlie same big window of heavy,
leaded panes so old and flawed that it was
hard to see through them. There was the
same mellow lamplight shining out into the
street, and the same great door with its mas-
sive iron latch. And as I had thirty years
before, I opened it and stepped into the
shop.

'Tire little bell tinkled as the door opened
. — a silver bell, it seemed, deep inside the
shop. My footsteps rang on the scrubbed
pine floor, and the light of the three ship’s
lamps shone on the great tapestry that cov-
ered the right-hand wall, and on the coun-
ter and the cupboards to the left.

Under the center lamp, close beside the
counter, was a little table of inlay and red
enamel, and on it were a chessboard and
men — ivory, black and red. I looked up
from them, as I had thirty years before, and
he stood there.

I think he knew me. I resemble my
father, and it may have been that, but I
think he knew me. As it happens I am not
my father, and the game we played that
night was a very different one.

"You are looking for something, sir?”
It was the same soft voice, small and hu.sky,
trapped in his scarred throat. I had heard
it often in my dreams during those thirty

WEIRD TALES

years. And he was the same, even to the
clothes he wore. I could swear to it.

He repeated his question, and it was as
though those thirty years had dissolved and
it was a boy of nine-going-on-ten who stood
half frightened, half defiant, and answered
him: "I'd like to see a ship, I think. A ship
in a bottle.”

He might have been carved out of wood
like one of his own fetishes. But his voice
was not quite so soft and ingratiating as I
remembered it. "I am sorry, sir. We have
no ships.”

I had changed the opening of the game,
and die play was changing too. Very well;
it was my move. "I’ll look around, if you
don’t mind. I may see something that I like.”

He took up the iron candlestick from the
counter beside the little table. It looked
smaller than I remembered, but then I had
been smaller thirty years before. "Do you
play chess, sir?” he inquired softly. "I have
some very unusual men here — very old.
Very fine. Will you look at them?”

T here seemed to be a kind of pressure in
the atmosphere, a web of intangible
forces gathering round me, trying to push
me back into the pattern of a generation be-
fore. I found myself standing over the
table, holding one of the ivory men. So
far as I could tell they were identical with
those mj' father had v/on. I had them still
at home, all but one knight which had been
lost.

"Thank you,” I said. "I have a very’ fine
set of my own — much like these of yours.
They are Persian, I’ve been told.”

I am not sure that he heard me. He stood
holding the candlestick over his head, watch-
ing my face with those sto.ny eyes. "I will
play you for these men,” he whispered.

"You must be confident,” I said. "'Tliey
are valuable.”

He tried to smile, a quick grimace of that
hard, thin mouth and a puckering of the scar
across his jowl. "I trust my skill, sir,” he
replied. "Will you risk yours?”

I looked at him then, long and hard. That
square brown face was no older than it had
been thirty years before; the eyes were as
bright and hard and — ageless. I began to
wonder then, as I think my father wondered
suddenly as he rose the winner, what might

be my forfeit if I should lose. But it was
the defiant boy of ten who blurted out: "Yes
■ — I’ll play you. But not for tliese chessmen.
I’ll play you for a ship.”

"There is no ship here,” he repeated. "But
if there is something else . . . ?”

"I’ll see,” I said. I turned to the counter
and glanced over the hodge-podge of curios
which littered it. They were less wonderful
than they had seemed to a child who was not
quite ten, trash mingled with fine workman-
ship and beautiful materials. I opened the
door of a cupboard, and it seemed to me
that the objects on the shelves were exactly
as I had replaced them thirty years before.
I pulled open a drawer, and the same colors
and patterns of grotesque shells and gaudy
butterflies came welling up in my memory.

I turned to him then and took the iron
candlestick. It seemed to complete a kind
of circuit in me — to drop a missing piece
into tlie jigsaw that was shaping in my mind.
Time melted away around m.c. and I was
moving dowm tlie line of cupboards, open-
ing one after another, toucliing the things in
them quickly with my fingers as I held the
candle high, llris time the brown ;n.in was
close beside me. And then I knew suddenly
that this rvas it. I tugged at the cup'Doard
door, and it stuck. I tugged again, and I
thought that he had stopped breathing. And
then something — chance, was it, or a kind
of fate? — something gave me the trick, the
little twist to the handle as I pulled, and
the cupboard swung out on noiseless hinges
exposing the alcove — and the ship.

It V/3S the same — and it v/as not the
same. The listless sails seemed browner and
some of them were furled as though the
captain had given up hope of wind. "The
deck was bleached whiter by the tropic sun,
and the paint had chipped and blistered on
the trim hull. The garments which the tiny
crewmen wore were worn and shabby, and
there were fewer men that I remembered.
But the midget captain stood on his bridge
as he had stood thirty years before, eyes fixed
grimly on the empty sky, staring at me and
through me. This time his hands were
clasped behind his back, left fist clasped on
his right wrist just above the shining hook.
This time he seemed a little less erect, a little
older than before.

I had a firm grip on the iron candlestick

SHIP-IN-A-BOTTLE

as I turned to the proprietor, for I did not
like what was in his face. It was gone in
an instant. ”I had forgotten this, sir,” he
said. “I will play.”

A nd then it seemed that there was an-
other hand on mine, pushing my fingers
down into the pocket of my vest, bringing
out the same uneven little disc of gold which
my father had tossed to call the play on an-
other night.

His eyes went down to it, then back
to mine. "If you are agreeable, sir,” he
said, "I am accustomed to the black.”

I am not a great player, or even a very
good one. As I set out the red men on the
squares of the board, the same question rose
again in the back of my mind. What was
the price of my defeat? What was the prize
he coveted, which I could give him — ^him,
whose choice W'as always black?

I think that two of us played the white
game that night I think he knew it, for his
seamed brown face was pale as he bent over
the board. The game W'ent quickly; tliere
was never any doubt in my mind of the next
move, and there seemed a grim certainty
about his. I cannot tell you now what
moves we made, or what the end-play was,
but I knew suddenly that his king was
trapped, and he knew too, for as I reached
out to touch my queen his face w-as murder-
ous.

Board and men w-ent over on the floor as
he lunged to his feet, but I was watching
him and I sprang back over my toppled
chair, sweeping up the heavy candlestick.

As he lurched toward me, I hurled it at his
head.

Was there a web of unseen forces spun
around us, drawing us together after those
thirty years? Was it chance, or fate? 1
could hardly have missed, but I did, and the
iron stick crashed past him into the great
green bubble with its imprisoned ship.

For one endless moment his iron fingers
tore at my throat. For one moment I was
beating blindly at his face with both fists,
struggling to break away. For one moment
he raged down at me, his face contorted
with fear and rage, hissing strange syllables
in that husky whisper. Then there welled
up all around us the surge and roar of the
sea, and I heard wind strumming through
taut cordage, and the creak of straining
blocks, and the snap of filling sails. I heard
a great roaring voice shouting orders, and
the answ'ering cries of men. And something
vast and black rushed past me through the
gloom, the smell of the sea was rank in my
nostrils, and the lights went out in a howl
of rising wind — and the pressure of iron fin-
gers on my throat was gone.

When I could breathe again I found my
matches and lit the ship's lamp which hung
from the beam overhead. The green glass
globe was powder. The ship was gone. A.nd
tlie thing that lay sprawled at my feet among
the scattered chessmen, its clothes in tatters
and its flesh raked as if by the barnacles of
a ship’s bottom — its throat ripped as if by
one slashing blow of a steel claw — that thing
had been too long undersea to be wholly
human.

nverness Cape

By AUGUST DERLETH

M ORDECAI PIERSOiN was a mean,
grasping man in liis late forties.
He kept a small pawnshop off
Piccadilly, and in that had sometiiing in com-
Oion with his aged uncle. That was the only
thing, however, the two men had in common.
Tlie old man, Thaddeus Pierson, was a
kindly, generous soul with a harmless pas-
sion for collecting oddments of one kind or
another. He was of independent means, and

could afford to indulge both his capacity for
charity and his desire to increase his collec-
tion with becoming modesty.

Mordecai always believed that the various
baubles in his shop were of more monet.iry
value than his uncle’s hodge-podge. After
all, when it came down to it, a chair once
used to murder someone was nothing more
than a chair, and, if anything, it had less
value than a chair which had not been so

Heading by BORIS DOLOOV

THE INVERNESS CAPE

us«d, And who would want a rusty knife
which was still stained with blood? And, for
that matter, what good was an old book on
witchcraft?

However, Mordecai, who was too par-
simonious to buy one, did envy old Thaddeus
Pierson his Inverness cape. Apart from the
old man’s money, that was the only thing
he envied him. Mordecai knew very well he
would get most of the old man’s money when
he died, but from things Thaddeus had said,
there was more than just a reasonable doubt
about the Inverness cape. For it was not
really the old man’s in the sense that it was
part of his wardrobe; it belonged to his col-
lection, and at first Thaddeus was annoyingly
mysterious about it. Partly because of the
old man’s reticence, Mordecai was all the
more determined to gain possession of the
cape, for it was such a magnificent piece of
work, a heav)’ black, lined in a kind of deep
gray satin, with thickly braided cords of red
silk to support the clasp at the neck. Hand-
' wrought, dearly, and made to order.

Mordecai went every Sunday to call on his
unde. There was nowhere else he cared to
go, since most of the other places to which
he might have gone cost him a little more
and his uncle usually asked him to stay for
whichever meal was closest to his coming —
usually dinner; by timing his visits with care,
Mordecai thus saved the price of his dinner.
This was so regular a procedure that he
could count on this weekly saving, and duly
kept a record of it.

Mordecai’s visits, incredible as it might
seem, did give old Thaddeus Pierson a modi-
cum of pleasure most of the time. For
Mordecai always pretended a great interest
in his uncle’s collection, and his pretense was
enlivened by the tantalizing possibility that
sooner or later he might lead the old man
to divulge some details about the Inverness
cape. He could remember that first night
when he had show'ed it to him, how the old
man had gone proudly into that vast room
opening off his chamber, talking with an
animation that brought a glow of pleasure
to his rounded cheeks.

"My boy, tonight I have to show you the
greatest treasure ever to come into my poor
house. It is not too much to say that it is
the very heart of my collection,” he had said.

Mordecai, knowing of the old man’s fasci-
nation for the macabre, had expected noth-

ing less than tlie skeleton of an executed
murderer or something akin. His first reac-
tion at sight of the Inverness cape was one
of surprise, but this was quickly superseded
by an intense, avidly possessive pleasure,
complicated by an immediate envy. And his
initial reaction, too, had had about it some-
thing alien, something that startled him; for,
as he stood gazing down in the none too
brightly lighted room at the ricli folds of
that garment, hg had had the curious im-
pression that the cape bad moved of itself,
as if it had life — ^but of course, he had
touched it. and the garment had presence.
Ah, but he would be a striking figure of a
man with that beautiful cape swinging from
his shoulders!

T he thought had haunted him ever since
that time, and now, every Sunday when
he visited his old uncle, he paid a visit to
the cape, too. He was like all small souls
who, living their circumscribed lives in tiny
orbits ruled by grasping natures, easily be-
come obsessed by trifles, which, in tire com-
parative emptiness of their lives, soon come
to assume an importance equal to life itself.
Whenever Mordecai thought of Thaddeus,
he instinctively thought of the Inverness
cape, too; it had never been so of any other
piece in the old man’s collection of macabre
souvenirs, but the cape was in truth a master-
piece, just as Thaddeus had said, "the heart”
of his collection.

And every Sunday, when the collection
moved into the limelight, Mordecai did his
best to turn the conversation to the Inver-
ness cape, with a single-mindedness that
amounted to sheer devotion. Old Thaddeus
Pierson was not above yielding from time
to time, just as he could not resist a modest
pride in taking pleasure at his nephew’s
gloating upon the cape where it lay spread
out for the inspection of all who cared to
see it.

So, by and by, Mordecai discovered
enough to whet his appetite for more.

The Inverness cape had once been the
property of a mass-murderer. Mordecai tan-
talized himself with the thought that it might
have been Jack the Ripper or Troppmann,
but it was manifest even on cursory examina-
tion that the cape post-dated those celebrated
gentlemen. Mordecai, who had no supersti-
tions, tried to imagine the look of the un-

WEIRD TALES

known murderer about his grisly business,
certainly wearing the cape. He could see
him slinking down the dark alleys and by-
ways of Soho and Wapping, of Limehouse
and Whitechapel— yes, indeed, the haunts
of Jack the Ripper, and of his poor victims
at the oldest calling in the world!

Tlie cape had been especially made by an
ancient foreigner in a little shop in the
region of the East India Docks. Into it had
been woven "more than cloth,” said old
Thaddeus Pierson enigmatically.

Morecai was feverish with excitement.
"What in the world do you mean, Uncle
Thaddeus? 'More than cloth!' What a fasci-
nating thought! What more?”

But the old man had shaken his head.
"There are things it is better not to know.
You are a weak man, Mordecai; you are weak
in flesh and weak in spirit. Truth to tell — I
should destroy it, but I am weak in that, too.”

"Destroy it!” cried Mordecai, almost in
anguish at the thought. "Destroy that beau-
tiful garment? You must be out of your
mind. Uncle!”

"No, no, far from it. Believe me, it is an
evil thing.”

"Oh, come; come — the port was not that
strong.”

The old man had but smiled. And what a
smile! How enigmatic! How tantalizing!
Oh, it was maddening! On that occasion,
Mordecai had indeed been very close to
learning what he sought to know.

He came as dose on another, but failed
to interpret what he heard properly. The old
man had been reminiscing that night, and
had himself turned to the subject of the
Inverness cape.

"Some of those foreigners have more than
human craft, I believe,” he said. "Take that
fellow who wove the Inverness cape that
brute Woldner wore — I got tlie cape from
him, you know,” he went on, quite as if he
had told this to Mordecai before, "and he
told me strange things about it. He said he
had woven part of Woldner’s soul into it,
indeed he had! And the thing had a life of
its own. It ought not to be worn, but once
w'orn, its wearer is committed to a way of
evil from w'hich the cape will not let him
esc.ipe.”

Mordecai had made the mistake of inter-
rupting him at this point, and, m.oreover, of
casting doubt upon his tale. The old man

recovered himself, made a rousing joke at
the expense of the story he had just told,
and lapsed into a peroration upon the in-
trinsic value of a jew^eled knife he had that
day acquired from a merchant who assured
him it had been used by an Egyptian prince
to dispatch a faitlaless wife. Try as he would,
Mordecai could not get another word out
of his uncle on that occasion; the old man
w'as even guiltj' of a manifest reluctance to
let him look at the cape once more, but finally
yielded to his importunings, and led the way
into the room wdiich housed the collection.

There was the cape, as always, almost
sentient under his eyes. Mordecai laid his
hand upon it and stroked it as he might have
stroked a cat. It was uncanny, but the satin
lining seemed actually to respond, to grow
warm under his touch.

W HEN he left the house that night he
had the name of the cape’s former
owner, and he lost no time in looking up
Woldner. But Woldner’s case was disap-
pointingly ordinary — just a series of petty,
unimportant little murders; a policeman, an
old beggar, a woman, a little child — -revolt-
ing, in short, and murder committed ap-
parently simply for the pleasure of it. But
there was a curious note in the story — the
cape had been made for Woldner as a "peace
offering” from an old enemy, for Woldner
had apparently at one time been a respected
officer in the service of His Majesty, assigned
to duty at Delhi, where he had mortally
offended one of His Majesty’s Indian sub-
jects, who, upon coming to London shortly
after Woldner’s retirement, had made him-
self known to Woldner and presented him
with an Inverness cape woven especially for
him. The point was made because Woldner
had been identified by tlie cape and so
apprehended.

The accounts Mordecai read were all
somewhat garbled, subject, no doubt, to po-
lice censorship, but they were all agreed that
Woldner had emphatically disclaimed re-
sponsibility for the crimes, crying out that
he had been made to commit them, but fail-
ing to name the source of such heinous
pressure on him. Elis disclaimers of respon-
sibility had not saved him; the evidence was
clear; he had died for his crimes. The press
had made a modest todo about his fine rec-
ord in India.

THE INVERNESS CAPE

Mordecai told all this to his uncle when
next he called, and it had a most disturbing
effect on the old man. Thaddeus looked
sharply at him several times and asked
finally whether it had not occurred to him
that the Inverness cape, far from being a
peace offering, had instead been something
far different — "something malevolent, in
fact, and planned to be by that fellow whose
brother Woldner had had shot?”

"Oh, so that was it! I wondered. There
was just that business about an 'old enemy’
or something of the sort. Why did he have
his brother shot?"

"In the line of duty,” said the old man.

"It was the same fellow who wove the
cape, then?”

"Of course. Who else could it be?”

"And it would seem that they were the
best of friends thereafter,” mused Mordecai.
"Wasn’t the Indian among the mourners?”

"I believe he was.”

There was some oblique talk, but little
more from the old man.

This was, in fact, almost the last Mordecai
was to get from his uncle, for on his next
visit, which was to prove his last, he came
into the house just as the old man sank to
his bed, the victim of an aging heart which
had long given him trouble. Mordecai im-
mediately telephoned for a doctor, but it
seemed manifest that the old man would not
last long enough. He lay there, his eyes
closed, breathing stertorously, his face color-
ing up to indicate a certain amount of
asphyxiation. As he stood there, thinking of
his uncle’s dying, Mordecai’s natural avari-
ciousness pushed boldly to the surface, and
instantly he thought: If I am carrying that
Inverness cape or something — the doctor’ll
think I came with it on; nobody’ll know the
difference!

And, quick as the thought struck him,
Mordecai darted into the room of the collec-
tion — ^he did not even take the time to put
on the light; he knew his way so well —
snatched up the Inverness cape, and slipped
back into his uncle’s bedroom.

B ut now the old man’s eyes were open,
and, seeing Mordecai with the cape in
his hands, he opened them wider still and
gasped, "Mordecai — put it back. Destroy it.
For the love of God, don’t wear it! I beg
you — If once . . . you wear it . . . you v/ill

never escape its psychic forces — it will rule
you; it will destroy you . . . Mordecai, belie\’'e
me; I know; it was given me . . , condition
I destroyed it before I died. There is sorcery
in it — Mordecai, it ... is , alive!” But
tliis final effort was too much for his over-
tired heart, and the old man fell back into
unconsciousness, just as the doctor came in
the front door, and was pronounced dead
shortly thereafter.

Mordecai left his uncle’s house that Sun-
day evening with the Inverness cape swing-
ing about his shoulders. And what a grand
feeling it was, too! "What a conviction of
grandeur and majesty it gave him! If any-
one could have seen him at the moment he
descended tire steps to the street, he would
have looked with astonishment at his beam-
ing countenance; for Mordecai was in seventh
heaven at the success of his bold move, witi;.-
out being in tlie least troubled by the knowl-
edge that, technically, he had stolen the cape
against his uncle’s wishes.

Once safely at home with his prize, he
took it off and gloated over it, drawing all
the shades of his spare apartment, and hold-
ing the Inverness cape across his knees,
stroking and fondling it as if it were a crea-
ture for whose existence he was responsi’ole.
Indeed, the cape seemed to bring new life
into his home. There was a feeling of re-
surgent life-force strong in Mordecai, some-
thing he had not felt for years; he was no
longer conscious of his parsimoniousness,
but only of a sense of infinite well-being, as
if, by becoming the possessor of this garment,
he had come into a fortune. But, of course,
he was coming into Uncle Thaddeus’s mod-
est fortune; so he had every right to feel
pleased with life.

In the morning Mordecai had a caller — a
little wizened old man with a swarthy skin
who identified himself speedily as the maker
of the Inverness cape and politely asked
Mordecai to surrender the garment.

"My uncle gave it to me, I am sorry to
say,” said Mordecai with Icy steadiness and
unflinching eyes.

The old man looked his disbelief. "Per-
haps you would not object to calling on me
tonight, Mr. Pierson? Perhaps we could
come to some agreement about the cape? I
could always make you another, sir.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to dismiss
the fellow, but prudence intervened. Mor-

WEIRD TALES

decai said pleasantly that he saw no reason
wh}' he should not call. On the threshold
his visitor turned and said he would be
obliged to Mordecai if Mordecai did not
wear the cape.

"I shall do as I see fit,” said Mordecai
shortly.

But in the evening he did make his way
by cab to the out-of-the-way corner of the
East India Docks where the Indian had his
place of business. He wore the cape. Had
lie not been in the cab and traveling swiftly,
he might never have reached his destination,
for he caught sight of a bobby and was
suddenly possessed of the most extraordinary
sense of rage which had not subsided until
the cab had gone so far that the shining
helmet was lost to sight in the rainy night.

T fIS visit, unfortunately for Mordecai,
-S-A bore no further fruit. Despite the
Indian’s pleading that he be allowed to
v/eave an Inverness cape especially for him,
Mordecai grew every instant more stubborn;
he must have this cape, or none.

The Indian urged; he could make an exact
duplicate, except for one thing.

"Ah!” cried Mordecai, seizing upon the
point. "Then it would not be the same."

"No, sir.”

"How would it differ.''”

"Your cape, sir, would be entirely of
doth.”

"And isn’t this one.^”

The Indian shook his head, and his black
eyes stared almost insolently into Mordecai’s.

"No, thank you,” said Mordecai, and
turned on his hed.

"Sir, I must have that cape before it does
more harm. And it does not like remorse
or weakness.”

"Good evening!”

Mordecai stepped out into the wet night,
his cape almost caressing his body, making
him to feel twenty years younger, filling him
w'ich a kind of exultance and pride, not only
of possession, but of something more. Be-
hind him, in the little shop, the Indian made
himself ready to follow' and recover the cape,
W'hich, he had mfcrred plainly, to Mordecai’s
irritation and sense of outrage, he meant to
destroy.

Mordecai set out in a lordly stride dow'n
tlie East India Dock Road. He d.isliked the
neighborhood, and meant to take the under-

ground bade to his lodgings, but at the
moment he was some distance from a sta-
tion, there W'as no cab in sight, and he had
to walk. What a pity, he reflected, that there
were so few people about to see him in all
this grandeur! The night w'as damp with
slowly shifting vapors; house-fronts, street-
lamp posts, railings — all gleamed yellowly
in the night, giving off a kind of sheen; and
overhead the night sky was eerie with the
glow of London in the thickening fog.

Small wonder, in view of the increasing
density of the atmosphere, that Mordecai’s
pursuer lost him from time to time.

How good the cape felt, how warm it was!
reflected Mordecai as he strode along, feel-
ing like a little king. How its weight pressed
upon his shoulders, how the clasp and the
slip-knotted cord seemed to snuggle close
to his neck! Mordecai walked fast, so that
the cape might billow out behind him a
little, and so give him the aspect of flight — ■
as if he were a great bird, or a bat, or Mr.
Conrad Veidt performing on the stage in the
role of Count Dracula.

Ah, but his little mind was occupied! And
how happy he was! And how well for him
that he knew this brief happiness, because
suddenly, horribly, incredibly, something
happened to Mordecai Pierson!

He saw a policeman.

The policeman w.as alone, standing at the
entrance to a dark alley, just under a feebly-
glowing light, trying in vain to read some-
thing he had written into his notebook.

M ordecai caroe to a dead stop. Inside
him there rolled up a great rage against
that helmetted fellow, an insane fury which
caused him to tremble and shake with its
vehemence, and on his back he felt his In-
verness crawl and crouch, as if about to
spring. He took a step forward, and another
— and then he could not hold himself an-
other instant. He launched himself upon the
unsuspecting policeman, closed his wiry
hands about the poor fellow’s throat, and
pressed hard, widi a terrible, animal fury.
When he got up, tlie policeman was dead.
Mordecai stepped back, breathing fast.
He looked all around him. No one had seen.
Instantly he faded into the fog, a great sense
of exultation le.aping within him. He ran a
little way, but drought this unseemly, and
settled down to a walk.

THE INVERNESS CAPE

He had gone scarcely thirty rods before
the enormity of what he had done came
upon him. In God’s name! he thought to
himself, it must have been a dream! But
cries were being raised behind him, and he
knew it was no dream. What had taken
possession of him? What malevolence had
raised itself within him?

J UST at that moment, he saw walking
aliead of him, an old beggar.

Once again he paused, once again he felt
rising inside him a hot, bestial rage, and
he felt the cape closing protectingly around
him, almost as if pushing him a little, urg-
ing him fitfully forward. But at the same
time, something rang and echoed dimly in
his memory. He seeriaed to remember a pat-
tern somewhere, a mad, homicidal pattern
of Indian vengeance, of horrible murder
and retribution, and he heard his uncle’s
despairing voice crying out on the threshold
of death, "Mordecui — it is alive!”

The pattern was Woldner’s — he had
killed first a policeman, then an old beggar.

then — no, no, great God! The cape — it was
the cape! With a terrible cry, Mordecai flung
himself backward and away from the beggar,
for whose scrawny neck his frenaied fingers
were already reaching, and, gasping, reached
for tlie clasp at his neck.

But something was there before him. it
was the knotted cord, and of a sudden, even
as he reached to free himself from the
hellish garment once so caressing about hiS
shoulders, the cape seemed to slide up his
body, enclosing him, enveloping him, and
the knot at his neck grew tighter, the cord
grew taut, the cape moved up, over his
head, stifling his gasping cries.

In a fev/ horrible moments Mordecai's
iconoclastic avarice had been rewarded. Even
as the Indian came pattering out of the fug,
he fell heavily to the pavement and rolled
off the curb, and the Inverness cape flowed
open and settled its folds almost lovingly
about him, spreading itself over his prostrate
body like something alive like some great
beast of prey waiting complacently for its
next victim.

Grave

Robbers

By MARVIN MILLER

Y OU pride yourselves as archaeologists.

The learned ones who speak in muted tones.
Blowing the dust from prehistoric bones.

You pry in secrets, making tiresome lists
Of relics stolen from the somber gloom
Of graves. The man of yesteryear, in sleep,

You lure from rolling plains and kivas’ deep.

And smugly shut him in a show-case tomb.

Sacrilegious, plunder-seeking fools.

What pleasure do you feel when from the ground
You lift a grinning skull? Your futile tools
That unsealed once . . . forever this, his mound.
Will rust. Perhaps a scientist from Mars
Will proudly show your skulls to other stars!

evolt of the Trees

By ALLISON V. HARDING

HAT is a tree?” said Professor
\ /% / Hodges of Brooks Agricultural
▼ T College. "Why simply a low-
grade form of plant life slowed down to
ioJinitesimal movement of growth too small
for us to see or measure.”

Harvey "Tlie Hunch” Winslow, reporter
for the Western News-Chronicle nodded
borcdly.

"That’s fine, Professor, but I don’t see the
angle. I’m supposed to write this article for

our Sunday supplement. We’re writing it
for people who like trees. You don’t seem
to think much more of them than I do.”

Professor Hodges waved his hand.

"Young man, it isn’t that at all. It’s sim-
ply that a tree is one of the lowest forms of
life . . . merely a perennial woody plant
characterized by its single main stem. 'There
is some beauty, yes. A certain stately dignity
about trees but no excitement, no drama, no
what you call ’angle.’ ”

Before you go thinking that a tree is one of the lowest forms of life — listen , . .1

Me, the best reporter Western ever had and
they stick me on a Sunday supplement story
on trees.” Harvey Winslow grimaced. "I
wonder if there’s a bar around this place.”

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and
Winslow finally found his way to one of
those small hidden little taverns that crop
up even in an obscure suburb like Brooks.
After the fourth drink, Harvey leaned for-
ward and leered at the barkeep.

"Do you like trees?” he said, drawing his
lips back in a near snarl.

In the manner of barkeeps for ages, tliis
obliging fellow leaned forward, his weather-
beaten face only a few inches from Harvey’s.

"Naw,” he muttered.

"I’m on a tree story.”

Harvey waggled his head and his whole
body took it up until he swayed precariously
on the stool.

"They call me ’Hunch’ Harvey. I’ve re-
ported some of the biggest crime cases the
city’s ever had and then they send me up
here.”

Winslow got up muttering half to himself.
"I knew I should have quit before I took
this rotten assignment.”

"What?” said Hodges leaning forward
and cupping one hand to his ear.

"Oh nothing,” replied Winslow in his
normal voice. "Thanks, Professor.”

Outside the teachers’ residence, Winslow
slammed his battered fedora on the back of
his head and started disconsolately down the
street.

"Me trying to do a beauty and the beast.

Heading by
BORIS DOLGOV

WEIRD TALES

"Yeah,” said the barkeep disinterestedly.
"Give me another drink of that furniture
polish.

T he way Harvey felt an hour later, the
furniture-polish line was no longer a
joke. It was a real possibility. He left the
bar, to be sure, mainly under his own power
but guided and directed by a couple of fellow
habitues who were either immune to the
furniture-polish liquor or too smart to take
more than one sip of it.

As Harvey navigated his somewhat cir-
cuitous route from the bar, the road and the
sky seemed to run together before him. The
bright sun blinded and bothered him. He
suddenly felt ill and his clothes felt very
tight and he was even less happy about being
a reporter and in a suburb tw’enty-one miles
from his big-city newspaper than before, and
most of all there was that impossible story
about trees.

A good reporter is good probably for a
variety of vague reasons, but one thing is
certain: He usually doesn’t stay being a re-
porter unless he has curiosity and a desire
to get up close to what he’s repotting. This
trait was so inbred in Journalist 'Winslow
that even now with pints of the ungodly
furniture polish aboard him, he headed in-
stinctively for the subjects of his story to be
— even though they were trees!

Not far from the cluster of little build-
ings that made up Brooks Agricultural Col-
lege, its satellite structures and the small
town, was a wooded area. Harvey labored
his way across a football field which now
lay unicept and deserted under the spring
sky. He lurched in among the trees embrac-
ing an oak (not in affection but of necessity
as he lost his balance) . Elaborately he started
to tip his hat, laughed at his own silliness
and stumbled on a few more paces. The
brilliance of the sun was gone in here. It
was cool and the cheap burning liquor within
him didn’t seem to burn and joggle up and
down as much. His shoulder rammed a
maple and the shock knocked him sideways.

"Might as well sit down,” he muttered
aloud already seated, his back against the
belligerent maple.

It wasn’t bad here, he thought. Certainly
iie was right at the source. His befuddled
brain fumed through an alcoholic haze.

"Angle, angle, angle. What’s there tu
say about trees.^ 'They were, and they grew,
and somebody chopped them down and
chopped them up and burned them or used
them to make a building or . . . well, a base-
ball bat.”

"George,” muttered Harvey. "George,
you’re a misguided stupid old man.”

George was G. Talmers, citywide editor
of the Western News-Chronicle and Wins-
low’s boss.

"Look at tlie jobs I’ve done on crimes,
George,” muttered Winslow broken-heart-
edly. "Why I’ve got the second sight and the
intuition of a hundred women. Didn’t I get
a slant on the Logan case that cracked it
open, and you get me to do a Sunday sup-
plement — on trees!”

After a while Harvey stopped muttering.
The liquor flowed, not diurned through him,
and deadened his outraged feelings. It was
cool here among the trees, and on tlie way
back to the city tonight he’d think up some-
thing on die train. He’d get an angle. He
always did.

Harvey Winslow’s head fell slackly to one
side. His eyes, although open, saw little.
On his face was a set, foolish grin. Tlie
fingers of his hands spread out in the earth.
Through the trees that surrounded him, he
could see the football field he’d traversed,
and beyond that buildings of the college
town. Time passed unaccounted-for and
Winslow sat there. A slight wind pushed
and tickled at his face but the grin remained
set. The name of Talmers, city editor, flashed
through his mind briefly and was engulfed
happily in alcohol. The wind rustled some
more.

A nd then the rustling came to have a
pattern. It nagged at him and then there
was a voice, more voices, many voices. Dis-
tinguishable.

"One said; "I hear we’ll be next,”

"Yes, they’ve decided.”

"Let’s make this our time then.”

"We have waited long enough.”

Winslow said "huh” out loud but there
was nothing there. There was really no sound.
It was in his head with the alcohol. He set-
tled against the maple and listened.

"It’s very simple.”

“The conceit of these creatures.”

REVOLT OF THE TREES

"They have mistreated us, hacked us up
and cut us down for ages.”

’ Sent us screaming and crashing to the
ground with never a thought that we were
living beings far more civilized than they —
and perhaps because of our very advance-
ment less ^le to defend ourselves.”

"But things are different now.”

"Soon they will be.”

"We will know.”

"We will act as we have planned."

"Are the others ready?”

"Not here and some place else somewhere,
but cver}'W'here.”

"Let it start here but it will be finished in
all places.”

"We have not sought this battle but now
it’s ours and we will win.”

Winslow shook himself as though a man
with a bad dream. The voices were nowhere
but in his head. They W'ere voices — not one
but different ones.

,"We will march that day they come to
cut us down.”

"We will head for the city."

The voices droned on. Plans like a mili-
tary campaign, and Winslow’s mind made
pictures clear as a Leica. The trees w'ould
march. The elms and oaks and maples, the
big ones and the little ones too. The people
in the towns would see and scream and go
mad. The madness would spread across the
countryside as tlie trees, all of them, marched
on. Buildings would be destroyed by the
tonnage of moving menacing wooden robots.
People could run but there would be no
escape. They would be caught up in the
now-living tentacled branches. The horror
would stalk down the highways. Opposition
would be absurdly futile. The news would
flash ahead and skeptical city-dwellers would
sneer.

Then the first of the lumbering giants of
wood would appear. People would run in
terror as bridges and ramps would be
wrecked, cars overturned and finally they
would seek refuge in their caves of steel
and cement, but the trees would press on,
their branches crashing through windows
and reaching inside. Even the skyscrapers
would shake as thousands of huge oaks
would pile against their brick and concrete
sides reaching their knobby lengths up five,
sIk, seven, and eight stories.

"It’s all so simple, " said a voice.

"It will be so totally unexpected.”

"No one will be prepared to combat us,
for how could tliey?”

"This time it shall alw'ays be ours."

"We shall never become so absorbed in
our own glorious and exalted civilization as
to forget and ignore the evidence of these
creatures around us and allow them to become
such self-important annoying destructive lit-
tle forces.”

The imagery kept up . . . nightmare pic-
tures of huge, tall murdering monsters with
a hundred branchlike arms reaching out,
octopus fashion.

W inslow somehow' crawled away on
hands and knees. As the day waned, it
grew cold and chill and Winslow found
himself on all fours inching toward the foot-
ball field. The trees were behind him now
and the only sound was the faint rustling
of the wind.

The air had a sobering effect and Hart'ey
forced himself erect. He knew nothing ex-
cept that he felt very sick from the liquor.
He staggered toward the town, and with the
help of a solicitous policeman found the
local hostelry. There, w'itli the aid of his
newspaper credentials and a large tip, he was
able to persuade the dubious clerk to give
him a room and send a wire to his city desk
explaining that he was staying on. Winslow
fell into bed in his room.

Brightness and a terrific headaclie were
the next things he knew. It was morning
of the following day. For a while he lay in
bed wondering first where he was, then
when he recalled that, why he was there.

His first reaction to the answer was one of
disgust. The darned Sunday supplement
story, "Trees!” Then the recollection of his
experience in the forest gripped him. He
shook his head and needles of pain shot
from temple to temple. He grumbled to him-
self. Liquor had never before given him
hallucinations. He dressed and went down-
stairs finding a telegram from his office. It
was from the city editor: "Where is story?
Call. Talmcrs.”

Between the wire and his headache,
Winslow had a good excuse to frown. He
went into a nearby restaurant and drank
down three cups of black coffee, one right

WEIRD TALES

after ano&er. There was something disturb-
ing about last night. It was his old intuition
going. He felt as he had felt many times
before, the way he felt when something big
v;as about to break. He’d get the feeling
working on a case. He’d never been wrong
yet. That was why they called him "Hunch”
Harvey, and whether they kidded him or not
about it, and they usually did, everybody
around the office took it for granted that
there was something in it. Winslow had a
feel for these things. Gjuld that furniture-
polish liquor have upset him to the degree
of giving him these premonitions?

Winslow paid for the coffee and strode
back to the hotel feeling better. He went
into a booth and called the Western News-
Chronicle.

He mumbled an extension number to
the answering voice and waited impatiently
until Talmers’ gruff tones came on.

"Hello George, this is Harvey.”

There were a few imprecations from the
other end. When they became coherent, the
voice said: "What the devil do you think
you’re doing up there? Going to school?
Look, I sent you out after a story. You don’t
need to retire!”

"Wait a minute, wise guy,” began Wins-
low. "You got to let me stay here a day
or so more. I think I’ve got an angle on
something.”

"You were sent up there to get a piece
on trees for our supplement! I don’t care
if the President is passing through tomorrow.
I want your story!”

"Wait a minute, Talmers. You always
were a thick-headed guy. I’ll get your story
on trees but I’m trying to work a new twist
to it. Give me a day or so more. I’ll call you
tomorrow, huh?”

"Suppose this is another one of your in-
spirations, eh ’Hunch’?”

"Have I ever gone wrong on a thing.
Boss?”

"What about those horses you gave me
last . . . ?”

"Aw, quit kidding, George. Listen, re-
member the Moran case and I walked in and
saw the suspects, waited around and talked
to them for a while and came back to the
office and told you it was the wife that did
it? You laughed at me about tliat, didn’t you?
And yet the coppers wised up to her after a

few weeks. I got maybe a big story breaking
up here. Let me hang on to it.”

"You been drinking again,” growled the
receiver.

Winslow’s denial died in his throat
guiltily.

"Just a day or so more, Talmers. I’ll get
your story in. What else would you be doing
with me anyway? With that short-handed
staff of yours, you’d probably want me to
straighten up the files or clean out the beet
bottles in your desk.”

"Now look, Winslow,” bellowed the cit)-
editor. "I can’t fool around humoring you
dreamers. You get that story in to me and
get back here pronto, see?"

"Yeah, yeah. Chief. You’ll get it. Just
a day or so extra.”

A nd before any more orders could come
from the other end, Harvey slammed
up the receiver. He walked around the town
that morning noting with the avid interest
of a city dweller those commonplaces of the
semi-country that are accepted by suburban-
ites. The grass and the trees did look kind
of good. The trees in the city were small
and weak and sickly. Those out here were
strong and huge. Formidable they were. All
the same family though, the phrase came
to him. All the same family. City trees,
country trees, trees everywhere. Big and lit-
tle. He wrinkled his forehead.

In the afternoon Winslow strolled back
over the athletic grounds of the agricultural
college toward the wooded area beyond. It
was the summer recess and this part of the
town was deserted. As best he could, he
retraced the steps he had taken yesterday.
He sat down under an old oak, took a
cigarette out and lit it. He put his head back
against the tree. A bird twittered somewhere
above and from the distance the warm sum-
mer air carried to him the hooting of a
train far off and then farther. He wasn't
uncomfortable out here and yet somehow
he missed the el and the horns and the noises
that millions of people together in a small
area of paving stone and brick and iron can
maice. Another cigarette followed the first
Doggone it all but it was peaceful in the
country. He thought suddenly that this was
the first time he had really relaxed in
months. With the paper short-handed be-

REVOLT OF THE TREES

4 ?

otose of the war, it was a terrific grind day
after day with not even mucli of night-time
or week-end recess.

He leaned his head back against the un-
even knobby bark. He felt drowsy and
worried vaguely about his supplement story.
Then suddenly a small distinct picture flew
into his mind. It grew larger like trick
photography thrown against a screen, W’ith
the center object coming toward you at tre-
mendous speed. Immediately it was all be-
fore him, a picture somehow distorted of
men in bright checked windbreakers and
mackinaws sawing and dropping at these
trees. They were all around him, their huge
cross-saws working away furiously, and even
as he watched, the trees came crashing to the
ground, their huge still lengths humbled
and defeated before him, and in their trunks
and foliage he seemed to see agonized vis-
ages, distorted expressions of pain, of fear,
of death. These men worked on, and then
almost like a moving picture, except that the
letters did not appear visually before him
hut only in idea form in his brain, the
phrase came.

"We have heard.”

"We know.”

“They are going to cut us down.”

"That is when we must act.”

"We, and other trees all over, every-
where.”

Once again scenes flashed before his eyes
— armies of trees marching in orderly
formation sweeping all before them, the
human creatures driven, driven, running
and screaming, a sight too horrible to be-
hold— the revolt of the trees.

On and on they would come, stopping
only occasionally to sink their hungry roots
into the earth, to take unto themselves new
nourishment, and tlaen march on.

O H, HUMANS would not give up easily.

There would be airplanes and bombs
and bullets. The men with their axes and
saws. People would try to fire the army of
wood and some of the trees would die. But
imagine the trees in a forest. Imagine the
trees in a whole country of forests. They
were too many to be stopped. Bullets do
no good. Huge edifices of steel and stone
would be by-passed and their hiding tenants
blockaded to starvation. There was no es-

cape. Water w’as no obstacle to these huge,
buoyant, bobbing masses. Phrases, voices
crowded into Winslow’s mind follow'ing so
swiftly one after another that they plopped
in and plopped out like a rubber ball thrown
into an empty bucket.

"The world of trees has come alive.”

"We have stood silently for ages taking
the mistreatment and abuse of human crea-
tures.”

"Our very existence has been threatened
by carelessly set fires, by greed, by the
thoughtlessness of little creatures who have
climbed us and deformed us by breaking our
limbs.”

Somehow Winslow fought to his feet
against an overpower oppressiorf, against a
density of evil that came from all sides,
against voices that were hurled back and
forth.

"When they come to cut us down, that
will be the signal.”

And something else that shocked him even
more. An idea that came to him in words . . ,
a voice that was saying:

"Look there. There is a creature.”

"A hated human creature walking belov/
there.”

"But nothing does he know of the plans
of the trees.”

Winslow staggered from the forest, his
gait unsteady, and unsure — ^this time from
horror. He w'ent straight to his hotel and sat
down. For a long time the chill in his body
would not go; nor would the coldness of his
hands and feet despite the warm air that
gently whispered through the oj>en window.

He got up and looked at himself in the
mirror. He fingered his white face nervously.
He noticed a piece of bark adhered to the
back of his hand and he shook it off as one
would a spider.

"This isn’t like me,” he said to his image
in the mirror. "What’s got you, Hunch?” He
shook his head. He was used to the sinister
aspects of big-city crime and violence. Why
should a bit of small-town bad liquor and
an overexcited imagination knock him off his
trolley like this?

Still there was something awful about
those images of the trees. The macabre idea
appealed to him as good drama. If all the
trees should suddenly decide to fight. If they
had the power to pull their roots up out of

WEIRD TALES

the earth and march together. Good Lord!
Twice he’d felt these things. There was yes-
terday after he’d gotten boiled with the bar
furniture polish, but then again today. He
was drunk yesterday. Had he dozed off com-
pletely today?

"I don’t think so,” Harvey muttered aloud
to himself. "I don’t understand this. I've
had these things all my life. Ideas. Flashes.
They mean something. They always have.
What’s tlie point of this though? I can’t
get it. Unless . . . unless it’s true!

Winslow’s voice rose almost to a cry.
Tiiat was the awful part. That was the worst
thing about this. He hadn’t said it to him-
self, or hadn’t admitted it. He knew it was
true! He knew it more strongly tlian any-
thing he'd ever known before in his life. The
trees. They did live. Professor Hodges said
they w'ere life. Damnit, you knew that if
you’d been to school at all. What’s a tree?
A seed. A seed somebody puts in the ground
and it grows. That’s life. That’s a form of
life. What about those plants somew'here?
Oh, he’d read it somewhere. Plants that ate
flies, even small animals. Professor Hodges
said they were the lowest form of life. Noth-
ing interesting about them, said the Profes-
sor, but what do we know? We know so very,
very little. TTiat was it. He’d go to see
Hedges. He’d tell Hodges what he’d heard.
Obviously something had to be done. Maybe
now there’ d still be time if all over the coun-
try men were armed. Fire could stop the
trees before they knew it. Before they
started to march and destroy and kill. He’d
see the old professor.

H e rang the school and found Hodges
could see him in a few hours. He spent
the intervening time peering out the win-
dow moodily toward the forest. The town
was small, surrounded by trees. He suddenly
knew he was trapped. 'Iliey were all trapped.
W'len the trees started to march, they would
he caught from all sides, caught between
huge wooden juggernauts.

On his way over to Hodges’ later, it first
occurred to him that he wouldn’t be believed.
Kc was annoyed at himself for not thinking
of that before because it was the most obvi-
ous fact of the whole inexplainable business.
No one would believe him. Objectively, he
didn’t believe himself. Hodges would think

he was drunk or insane or just a fresh re-
porter trying to have a laugh at the expen-e
of an academician.

His steps slowed as he neared the faculty
residence building. What was he to say? He
came to a stop for a moment outside the
building and then resolutely pushed inside,
his mind made up. Of course Hodges would
think he was crazy. It was too absurd even
for one of Winslow’s psychical bundles.

The old professor greeted him cordially,
'They talked for a moment about the school.
Then Winslow brought up the subject o:
trees again. Hodges smiled.

'"There’s so little to say about trees,” he
deprecated. 'They are plentiful and useful
but most uninteresting. They are nothing
like flowers.”

Winslow could see with half an eye that
the professor was a flower admirer. His room
was filled with them.

“Is it possible that a tree could have a
mentality' . . . could have any sort of thought
process of its own?”

"Don’t be absurd, my boy,” said Hodges.
"Ah,” he twinkled then. "I suppose you
people have to go to any lengths to think
of novel approaches for your reportorial ef-
forts. However, they have given you a hard
proposition with trees. Things were done
under or near trees, that’s true, historically
speaking,” brightened Hodges, "but the
trees themselves are like, well, like great
boulders on a cliff. Oh, you may quote me
on any of this,” Professor Hodges waved
airily. "My name, you know, James, Lea,
with an 'A,’ Hodges.”

Winslow nodded. There was nothing here
but an old man who liked flowers and wasn’t
interested in trees and was dinging to the
dim hope that possibly he would get his
name in a Sunday supplement feature.

Winslow was about to leave when the
memory of something came to him.

"By the way. Professor, that wooded area
back of the athletic grounds,” Winslow mo-
tioned with his arm. “I was walking through
there. What sort of trees are those?”

"Maples and oaks,” said Hodges absently.
"That’s a dreary bit of wood in there. You
know they’ve decided to cut down those
trees,” he added more am’matedly.

Winslow’s mouth went dry. "Cut them
down?” he croaked.

REVOLT OF THE TREES

"Yes, yes,” said the professor. "We need
to expand here, you lenow.”

One factor became terribly important to
Harvey Winslow.

"Tell me. Professor. Tell me," he pu.shed.
"Did you tell me this when I was in yes-
terday?”

" ’Bout the trees being cut down?" said
the teacher. "Why, no, I didn't say anything
about it. I didn’t know then, anyway. Fact
is, I learned about it after you left. I’ve
always suggested that area could be put to
some good use. A colleague phoned me not
long after you left, telling me tlie authorities
had decided to act on my suggestion.”

"I see. Well—”

"Well what, young man?”

"I don’t know how to say this. I just
wouldn’t cut down those trees. I mean I
think it’s nice over there. I've sat in there a
couple of times. It’s restful and cool. It
seems a shame to destroy those trees.”

H odges puffed up. "There are other
places where you can sit, young man.
After all, I believe we of the college are
capable of deciding how much land we
need.”

"Oh,” said Winslow in hopelessness.
"Yes, I guess you’re right. It seems a shame,
thought. It’s too bad not to leave it the
way it is.”

He turned and started toward the door.
"I hope I’ve been of help,” said Hodges.
"Sure, thanks a lot,” the reporter called.
"Anything else I can tell you, just let me
know. Remember that middle name is Lea
with an 'A.’ ”

"Yeah,” said Winslow.

It was getting dark as Winslow walked
back toward the hotel. There was another
hysterical telegram from Talmers waiting
for him. He went upstairs to his room and
'lay down fully clothed on his bed. He didn’t
even feel like eating. He had another bit
of strangeness to make his worries more
tangible. How had he come to learn diat
the trees in that field back of the football
ground were to be cut dow'n?

For several hours Winslow lay and tossed
on his bed, chain-smoking and picking at
his fingernails irritably. Around midnight
he got to his feet and went downstairs,
walking gently past the sleeping night clerk.

The little college town had gone to bed
two hours earlier and there seemed no one
else abroad. The few lights twinkled dis-
consolately in the gloom as he set out toward
the football field and the forest beyond. A
car passed him on the road, two people sit-
ting very close together. It was a comforting
sight and it made Winslow realize how
lonely he felt.

The surface of the football ground gave
spongily beneath his weight. The wet grass
licked at his ankles as he w'alked on. He came
to the slight slope beyond which a path led
down into the wooded district. The night
grew blacker as he advanced, and then from
out of the core of the blackness loomed the
outer sentinels of the w'ooden army.

A' new emotion clenched at Winslow’s
midriff squeezing his stomach and heart and
forcing his breathing faster. Many times
he’d been nervous and excited but never
before had he knowm anything like this . . .
a feeling of deep ominous fear, almost of
terror.

He forced himself onward into the w'oods,
reasoning with himself every step of the way.
It was a completely still night; the midnight
rule of summer had fallen upon the wind
too. Not a leaf rustled except where he trod
upon them on the ground. He walked until
the lights of the town w'ere no more. He was
in the center surrounded, he felt, by an alien
army aware of his every move. He lit a
match and his imagination told him that they
were watching, their grim visages looking
down appraising and calculating. His im-
agination told him that they knew he knew.
His imagination told him to run. He
grimaced as the flame of the dwindling
match bit into his finger.

It dropped ... a red glow falling to the
ground. The blackness closed in about him.

S OMEWHERE in the night a train whis-
tled accentuating his loneliness, making
him think of lights and brightness and hu-
man creatures. His mind filled with thoughts
of resentment now. Why shouldn’t they
clean out this filthy black hole? Build some-
thing bright and clean that men could use?
A greenhouse, a gym, or a building? Th.erc
was a story here but he knew he could never
write it because nobody would believe him.
never even believe "Hunch” Winslow, ’out

WEIRD TALES

he believed it and knew it was true. He
realized suddenly now what he must do.

He was in the middle of this monstrous
robot army. He knew what they planned.
He must stop them. The matches were still
in his hand. He would fire this place. He
flicked the cover up and gripped one, two,
and bent the cover back. He struck them
and bent down. Tlie wet leaves were slow
to catch. He gathered a few twigs with his
iree hand. They sputtered and hissed. He
worked feverishly now. It was so dank and
damp. Vaguely he heard a rustling, the wind
coming up. The matches burned to his finger
tips and he shook them out, fumbling for
new ones.

He struck two mote, and as he did so, the
rustling grew. There wms another sound and
he realized it was in his own throat. A
couple of branches sputtered. The flame took
hold and there was a feeble warm light. His
matches burned out and he reached for the
last three in the book. He struck them and
furiously tried to build the flame. With his
hands he scratched some more leaves and
branches over, unnoticing of the growing
rustling around him, the waving branches
. . . the movement.

A sharp pain stung through the fingers
of his right hand and again he shook the
last of his matches away. He must keep this
fire going. He must! He must build it until
the flames reached up and engulfed a tree
and then the other trees. He blew gently and
the flame showed yellowish-blue. It tried to
encompass the wet leaves he pulled toward
it. A wind hit the back of his neck. The
dead leaves rustled and scattered and the
flames dipped dangerously low. Harvey
whimpered. His breathing was heavy. He
was on all fours now working like one
possessed. The rustling redoubled and before
his eyes the fire smouldered, then it w'as a
pinpoint and finally it was gone even as he
frantically held his hands around the last
little glimmer oL warmth and light.

For a moment he stayed on all fours, the
twigs cooling under his fingers. He didn’t
want to turn his head or look up, for a great
and ominous creaking was above and behind
and on all sides of him. Then he was seized
with only one thought. Get up. Get out.
Run for the towm. Get out of there as soon
as he could. In the blackness he knew not

which way to turn. He stumbled forward
and plowed with cruel impact into a tree.
His cries were short and staccato now, com-
ing w'ith his short breathing. He turned to
one side and plunged furiously forward, and
again his body was stopped and bruised by
the knobby side of a huge tree. He turned
completely around and started in the other
direction. His hands were in front of his
head protectively. He took a few steps and
his elbows bumped sickeningly into wood.
He raised his voice then and yelled for help
and his cries came back to him from all sides.

The rumbling and rustling, these were
laughter. He put his hands out and felt on
all sides. There was wood evcrj'where, hard
knobby bark. He was trapped. As though
in a v/ooden stockade. The damp, unfriendly
ground beneath him, the wood on all sides,
and above those creaking slithering things
dropping lo-wer. The branches were coming
for him, flaying and beating at him, one iron
tentacle hooked at his arm, another at his
body, a third swished across his mouth cut-
ting off his screams. He fell to the ground
as though under the blows of a huge mob,
and the trees around him laughed.

# # « « *

I T WAS the fourth telegram from the
]Vestern News-Chronicle that upset the
manager of the hotel where Winslow had
stayed. The elderly, paunchy constable came
over by request and went up to the reporter’s
roo.m.

"Nope, here’s his bag. He wouldn’t leave
without that. Yes, he’s got this typewriter
up here that would more than pay for the
room rent. Say, here’s an article half-
finished.”

The pudgy defender of the law leaned
forward squinting his near-sighted eyes.

" ’Bout trees, that’s all I can make out.”
The clerk fussed around the room and
then the tw’o men left.

"Constable, he went to see Professor
Hodges over at the college. Might find out
something over there.”

"Good idea, Ben. I’ll look him up.”
"Okay. I wouldn’t worry though. He’ll
be back. Looks like an expensive portable
upstairs and they’re hard to get these days.”
Professor Hodges could throw no light on
Ham'ey Winslow’s disappearance and no-

REVOLT OF THE TREES

body was inclined to do much about it until
later in the day when the News-Chronicle,
having gotten no satisfaction with telegrams
and phone calls, sent another and very in-
dignant reporter to the college suburb. With
the opportunity of making the big-town
press, Constable Evans than organized a few
drowsy deputies, and with Professor Hodges,
who also had hopes of seeing his name in
print and the reporter from the News-
Chronicle, they set out.

Two hours later, they came upon Harvey
Winslow’s body in the wooded district be-
yond the college grounds. Constable Evans
had various theories of foul play. He sug-
gested that possibly one of tire inmates of a
neighboring insane asylum had done the
peculiarly brutal job, but a later checkup

revealed discouragingly that no inmate had
escaped within the last two years.

There were no clues, no footprints, just an
inhumanly battered corpse. State and local
police combed the ground without adding
anything to the findings. One of the things
that intrigued and puzzled the News-Chron-
icle reporter the most, and added the proper
speculative note to his yarn, was that
"Hunch” Winslow’s body was covered with
bark and splinters of wood, some of these
even having been driven into tlie flesh. It
was the most inexplicable, and as the News-
Chronicle man filed from the scene of tlie
tragedy: "Ironically, this is just the sort of
seemingly unsolvable crime that Harvey
Winslow with his uncanny 'sixth sense’
would have tackled so successfully.

OL Shape of ShJL to Cc

ome

LORDS OF THE GHOSTLAND hy Seabury Quinn

A Long Novelette of Jules de Grandin

e • •

H. Bedford-Jones

• Harold Lawlor •

IVIanly Wade Wellman

and others

WEIRD TALES for MARCH
^ ^ January ^ ***

Uhe

reen God’s Ring

S T. DUNSTAN’S was packed to over-
flowing. Expectantly smiling ladies
in cool crepe and frilly chiffon
crowded against perspiring gentlemen in
formal afternoon dress while they craned
neclis and strained ears. Aisles, chancel,
sanctuary, were embowered in July roses and
long trailing garlands of southern smilax,
the air was heavy with the humid warmth of
summer noon, the scent of flowers and the

perfume from the women’s hair and clothc-s.

The dean of the Cathedral Chapter, the
red of his Cambridge hood in pleasing con-
trast to the spotless white of linen surplice
and sleek black cassock, pronounced tlie
fateful words, his calm clear voice a steady
mentor for tlie bridegroom’s faltering echo:

"I, Wade; take thee Melanie to be my
wedded wife, to have and to hold from this
day forward — ”

The demons attend Siva in his attribute of Bhirta the Terrible, doing his
foul bidding and, if such a thing be possible, bettering his instructions

By SEABURY QUINN

"From this day forward,’’ Dean Quincy
repeated, smiling with gentle tolerance. In
forty years of priesthood he had seen more
than one bridegroom go suddenly dumb.
"iTom this day forward, for better, for
worse — ”

His smile lost something of its amuse-
ment, his florid, smootli-shaven face assumed
an expression of mingled surprise and con-
sternation which in other circumstances
would have seemed comic. Swaying back
and forth from toes to heels, from heels to
toes, the bridegroom balanced uncertainly a
moment, then witla a single short, hard,
retching cough fell forward like an over-
turned image, the gilded hilt of his dress

sword jangling harshly on the pavement of
the chancel.

For what seemed half a minute the bride
looked down at the fallen groom with wide,
horrified eyes, then, flowing lace veil billow-
ing about her like v/ind-driven foam, she
dropped to her knees, thrust a lace-sheathed
arm beneath his neck and raised his head to
pillow it against the satin and seed pearls
of her bodice. “Wade,” she whispered in a
passionless, cold little voice that carried to
the farthest corner of the death-still church.
“Oh, Wade, my beloved!”

Quickly, with the quiet efficiency bred of
their training, the young Naval officers at-
tending the fallen bridegroom wheeled in

Heading by A, R. 'TILBURNE

5J 1

WEIRD TALES

thsir places and strode down the aisle to
shepherd panic-stricken guests frour their
pews.

“Nothin’ serious; nothin’ at all," a lad
who would not see his twenty-fifth birthday
for another two years whispered soothingly
through trembling lips as he motioned Jules
de Grandin and me from our places. “Lieu-
tenant Hardison is subject to these spells.
Quite all right, I assure you. Ceremony
Will be finished in private — in the vestry
room when he's come out of it. See you
at the reception in a little while. Every-
thing’s all right. Quite — ’’

The pupils of de Grandin’s little round
blue eyes seemed to have expanded like
those of an alert tom cat, and his delicate,
slim nostrils twitched as though they sought
to capture an elusive scent. "Mats out, mon
brave," he nodded approval of the young
one-striper’s tact. “We understand. Cer-
tainement. But me, I am a physician, and
tliis is my good friend. Dr. Trowbridge — ’’
"Oh, are you, sir.^” the lad broke in al-
most beseechingly. “'Then for God’s sake go
take a look at him; we can’t imagine — ’’
“But of course not, con enfant. Diagnosis
is not your trade," the small Frenchman
whispered. "Do you prevail upon the con-
gregation to depart while we — attendez-moi.
Friend Trowbridge,” he ordered in a iow
voice as he tiptoed toward the chancel where
the stricken bride still knelt and nursed the
stricken bridegroom’s head against her
bosom.

"Sucre nom!" he almost barked the excla-
mation as he came to a halt by the tragic
tableau formed by the kneeling bride and
supine man. "Cest cela mhne.”

There was no doubting his terse comment.
In the glassy-eyed, hang- jawed expression
of the bridegroom’s face we read the trade
mark of tlie King of Terrors. Doctors, sol-
diers and morticians recognize death at a
glance.

“Come, Melanie,” Mrs. Thurmond put a
trembling hand upon her daughter’s shoul-
der. “We must get Wade to a doctor,
and — ”

"A doctor.^” the girl’s voice was small and
still as a night breeze among the branches.
“What can a doctor do for my poor mur-
dered darling? Oh, Wade, my dear, my
dear,” she bent until her lips were at his

ear, “I loved you so, and I’m your mur-
deress.”

Non, Mademoiselle," de Grandin denied
softly. “You must not say so. It may be
we can help you — ”

“Help? Ha!" she almost spit the exclama-
tion at him. “What help can there be for
him — or me? Go away — get out — all of
you!” she swept the ring of pitying faces
with hard bright eyes almost void of ail
expression. “Get out, I tell you, and leave
me with my dead!”

De Grandin drew the slim black brows
that were in such sharp contrast to his
wheat blond hair down in a sudden frown.
"Mademoiselle," his voice was cold as icy
spray against her face, “you ask if any one
can help you, and I reply they can. I, Jules
de Grandin can help you, despite the evil
plans of pisacha, bhirta and preta, shahini
and rakshash, I can help — ”

The girl cringed from his words as from
a whip. “Pisacha, bhirta and preta,” she re-
peated in a trembling, terrified whisper. You
know — ”

“Not altogether. Mademoiselle," he an-
swered, “but I shall find out, you may be
assured.”

“What is it you would have me do?”

Go hence and leave us to do that whidr
must needs be done. Anon I shall call on
you, and if what I have the intuition to sus-
pect is tme, tenez, who knows?”

She drew a kneeling cushion from the step
before the altar rail and eased the dead boy’s
head down to it. “Be kind, be gentle with
him, won’t you?” she begged. “Good-by,
my darling, for a little while," she laid a
light kiss on the pale face piOowed on the
crimson cushion. “Good-by — " Tears came
at last to her relief and, weeping piteously,
she stumbled to her mother’s waiting arms
and tottered to the vestry room.

“I should think not," he denied with a
shake of his head. “He was on the Navy’s
active list, that one, and those with cardiac
affections do not rate that.”

“Perhaps it was tire heat — ”

“Not if Jules de Grandin knows his heat
prostration symptoms, and he has spent
much time near the Equator. Tire fires of

THE GREEN GOD’S RING

hell would have been cold beside the tem-
perature in here when all those curious ones
were assembled to see this poor one and his
beloved plight their troth, but did not seem
well enough when he came forth to meet her
at the chancel steps? Men who will fall
prone on their faces in heat collapse show
symptoms of distress beforehand. Yes, of
course. Did you see his color? Excellent,
was it not? But certainly. Bronzed from the
sea and sun, au teint vermeil de bon sante.
We were not thirty feet away, and could see
perfectly. He had none of that pallor that
betokens heat stroke. No.”

"Well, then”' — I was a little nettled at
the cavalier way he dismissed my diagnoses
— "what d’ye think it was?”

He lifted narrow shoulders in a shrug
that was a masterpiece of disavowal of re-
sponsibility. "Le bon Dieu knows, and He
keeps His own counsel. Perhaps we shall
be wiser when the autopsy is done.”

We left the relatively cool shadow of the
church and stepped out to the sun-baked
noonday street. "If you will be so kind, I
think that I should like to call on the good
Sergeant Costello,” he told me as we reached
my parked car.

"Why Costello?” I asked. "It’s a case of
sudden unexplained death, and as such one
for the coroner, but as for any criminal ele-
ment — ”

"Perhaps,” he agreed, seeming only half
aware of what we talked of. "Perhaps not.
At any rate, I think there are some things
about this case in which the Sergeant will be
interested.”

We drove a few blocks in silence, then:
"What was that gibberish you talked to
Melanie?” I asked, my curiosity bettering my
pique. "That stuff about your being able
to help her despite the evil plans of the
thingabobs and whatchamaycallems? It
sounded like pure double talk to me, but
she seemed to understand it.”

He chuckled softly. "The pisacha, bhirta
and preta? The shahini and rakshash?”
"That sounds like it.”

'"niat, my friend, was what you call the
random shot, the drawing of the bow at ven-
ture. I had what you would call the hunch.”
"How d’ye mean?”

"Did you observe the ring upon the in-
dex finger of her right hand?”

"You mean the big red gold band set
with a green cartouche?”

"Precisement.”

"Not particularly. It struck me as an odd
sort of ornament to wear to her wedding,
more like a piece of costume jewelry than an
appropriate bridal decoration, still these
modern youngsters — "

"That modern youngster, my friend, did
not wear that ring because she wanted to.”
"No? 'Why, then?”

"Because she had to.”

"Oh, come, now. You can’t mean — ”

"I can and do, my friend. Did not you
notice the device cut into its setting?”
"’Why, no. 'What was it?”

"It represented a four-faced, eight-armed
monstrosity holding a straining woman in
unbreakable embrace. 'The great God
Siva — ”

"Siva? You mean the Hindu deity?”
"Perfectly. He is a veritable chamelon,
that one, and can change his form and color
at a whim. Sometimes he is as mild and
gentle as a lamb, but mostly he is fierce and
passionate as a tiger. Indeed, his Iamb-like
attributes are generally a disguise, for un-
derneath the softness is the cruelty of his
base nature. Tiens, I think that he is best
described as Bhirta, the Terrible.”

"And those others with outlandish
names?”

"The pisacha and preta are a race of most
unlovely demons, and like them are the rak-
shash and shahini. 'They attend Siva in his
attribute of Bhirta the 'Terrible as imps at-
tend on Satan, doing his foul bidding and,
if such a thing be possible, bettering his in-
structions.”

"Well?”

"By no means, my friend, not at all. It
is not well, but very bad indeed. A Chris-
tian maiden has no business wearing such a
talisman, and when I saw it on her finger I
assumed that she might know something of
its significance. Accordingly I spoke to her
of the Four-Faced One, Bhirta and his at-
tendant implings, the shahini, raksash and
pischa. Parbleu, she understood me well
enough. Altogether too well, I damn think.”
"She seemed to, but — ”

"'There are no buts, my friend. She un-
derstood me. Anon I shall understand her.
Now let us interview the good Costello.”

WEIRD TALES

D etective-sergeant jeremiah

COSTELLO was in the act of putting
down the telephone as we walked into his
office. "Good afternoon, sors,” he greeted
as he fastened a wilted collar and began
knotting a moist necktie. " 'Tis glad I’d
be to welcome ye at any other time, but jist
now I’m in a terin’ hurry. Some swell has
bumped himself off at a fashionable wed-
ding, or if he didn’t exactly do it, he died
in most suspicious circumstances, an’ — ’’

' It would not be Lieutenant Wade Hardi-
son you have reference to?"

"Bedad, sor, it ain’t Mickey Mouse!”
"Perhaps, then, we can be of some assist-
ance. We were present when it happened.”
“Were ye, indeed, sor? What kilt ’im?”
"I should like to know that very much
indeed, my friend. That is why Lam here.
It does not make the sense. One moment he
is hale and hearty, the next he falls down
dead before our eyes. I have seen men shot
through the brain fall in the same way.
Death must have been instantaneous — ”
“An’ ye’ve no hunch wot caused it?”

"I have, indeed, mon viettx, but it is no
more than the avis indirect — what you would
call the hunch.”

"Okay, sor, let’s git goin’. Where to
first?”

“Will you accompany me to the bride’s
house? I should like to interview her, but
without official sanction it might be' diffi-
cult.”

"Howly Mackerel! Ye’re not tellin’ me
she done it — ’’

"We have not yet arrived at the telling
point, mon ami. Just now we ask the ques-
tions and collect the answers; later we shall
assemble them like the pieces of a jigsaw
puzzle. Perhaps when we have completed
the mosaic we shall know some things that
we do not suspect now.”

“I getcha,’’ Costello nodded. "Let’s be
on our way, sors.”

rpHE Thurmond place in Chattahoochee
-L Avenue seemed cloaked in brooding
grief as we drove up the wide driveway to
the low, pillared front porch. A cemetery
quiet filled the air, the hushed, tiptoe silence
of the sickroo.m or the funeral cliapel. The
festive decorations of the house and grounds
werw as incongruous in that atmosphere of

tragedy as rouge and paint upon the cheeks
and lips of a corpse.

"Miss Melanie is too ill to be seen,” the
butler informed us in answer to Costello’s
inquiry'. "The doctor has just left, and — ■”

"Present our compliments to her, if you
please,” de Grandin interrupted suavely.
"She will see us, I make no doubt. Tell her
it is the gentleman with whom she talked at
the church — the one who promised her pro-
tection from Bhirta. Do you understand?”

"Bhirta?” the servant repeated wonder-
ingly.

"Your accent leaves something to be de-
sired, but it will serve. Do not delay. If you
please, for I am not a patient person. By no
means.”

Draped in a sheer convent-made nightrobe
that had been part of her trousseau, Melanie
Ihurmond lay rigid as death upon the big
colonial sleigh bed of her cliamber, a ma-
deira sheet covering her to the bosom, her
long auburn hair spread about her corpse-
pale face like a rose gold nimbus framing
an ivory' ikon. Straight before her, with set,
unseeing eyes she gazed, only the faint dila-
tion of her delicate nostrils and the rhythmic
rise and fall of her bosom testifying she
had not already joined her stricken lover in
the place he had gone a short hour be-
fore.

'The little Frenchman approached the bed
silently, bent and took her flaccid hand in
his and raised it to his lips. "Ma paiivre,”
he murmured. “It is truly I. I have come
to help you, as I promised.”

The ghost of a tired little smile touclied
her pale lips as she turned her head slowly
on the pillow and looked at him with wide-
set, tearless sepia eyes. "I knew that it
would come,” she told him in a hopeless
little voice. Her words were slow and me-
chanical, her voice almost expressionless, as
though she were rehearsing a half-learned
lesson: “It had to be. I should have known
it. I’m really Wade’s murderess.”

"Howly Mither!” Costello ejaculated
softly, and de Grandin turned a sudden fierce
frown on him.

"Comment?” he asked softly. “How do
you mean that, ma. petite roitelette?"

She shook her head wearily from side to
side and a small frown gathered between her
brows. "Somehow, I can’t seem to think

THE GREEN GOD’S RING

clearly. My brain seems seething — boiling
like a cauldron — ”

"Prechement, exactement, au juste,” de
Grandin agreed with a vigorous nod. "You
have right, my little poor one. The brain,
she is astew with all this trouble, and when
she stews the recrement comes to the surface.
Come, let us skim it off togetiier, tliou and
1” — he made a gesture as if spooning some-
thing up and tossing it away. "Thus we shall
rid our minds of dross and come at last to
the sweet, unadulterated truth. How did it
all start, if you please? What made you
know it had to happen, and why do you ac-
cuse yourself all falsely of the murder of
your amoureux?*

A little shudder shook the girl’s slim
frame, but a hint of color in her pallid
cheeks told of a returning interest in life.
"It all began with The Light of Asia?”

"QuoP” de Grandin’s slim brows rose in
Saracenic arches. "You have reference to
the poem by Sir Edw’ard Arnold?”

"Oh, no. This Light of Asia w'as an Ori-
ental bazar in East Fifty-sixth Street. The
girls from Briarly were in the habit of drop-
ping in there for little curios — quaint litffe
gifts for people who already seemed to have
everything, you know.

"It was a lovely place. No daylight ever
penetrated there. Tw'o great vases stood on
ebony stands in the shop windows, and be-
hind them heavy curtains of brocaded cloth
of gold shut off the light from outside as ef-
fectively as solid doors. The shop — if you
could call it that — was illuminated by
lamps that burned scented oil and were en-
cased in frames of carved and pierced teak-
wood. These, and two great green candles
as tall as a man, gave all the light there
was. The floors were covered with thick,
shining Indian mgs, and lustrous embroid-
eries hung against the walls. The stock was
not on shelves, but displayed in cabinets of
buhl and teak and Indian cedar— all sorts
of lovely things: carved ivories and moulded
silver, hand-worked gold and tortoise-shell,
amethyst and topaz, jade and brass and
lovely blue and green enamel, and over
everything there hung the scent of incense,
curiously and pungently sweet; it lacked the
usual cloying, heavy fragrance of the ordi-
nary incense, yet it was wonderfully pene-
trating, almost hypnotic.”

D e grandin nodded. "An interest-
ing place, one gathers. And tlien — ”
"I’d been to The Light of Asia half a
dozen times before I saw The Green One.”
"The Green One? Qui diahle?”

"At the back of the shop there was a pair
of double doors of bright vermilion lacquer
framed by exquisitely embroidered panels.
I’d often w'ondered what lay behind them.
'Then one day I found out! It was a rainy
afternoon and I’d dropped into The Light as
much to escape getting wet as to shop. ’There
was no other customer in the place, and no
one seemed in attendance, so I just wandered
about, admiring the little bits of virtu in the
cabinets and noting new additions to the
stock, and suddenly I found myself at the
rear of the shop, before the doors that had
intrigued me so. Tliere was no one around,
as I told you, and after a hasty glance to
make sure I was not observed, I put my hand
out to the neater door. It opened to my
touch, as if it needed only a slight pres-
sure to release its catch, and there in a
gilded niche sat the ugliest idol I had ev’er
seen.

"It seemed to be carved of some green
stone, not like anything I’d ever seen before
— almost waxen in its texture — and it had
four faces and eight arms.”
"Gu’est-ce-donc?”

"I said four faces. One looking each way
from its head. Two of the faces seemed as
calm as death masks, but the one behind the
head had a dreadful sneering laugh, and that,
which faced the front had tne most horrible
expression — nor angry, nor menacing, ex-
actly, but — w'ould you understand me if I
said it looked inexorable?”

"I should and do, ma chere. And the
eight arms?”

"Every hand held something different.
Swords, and sprays of leafy brandies, and
daggers — all but two. They were empty' and
outstretched, not so much seeming to beg as
to demand ao, offering.

"There was something terrible — and terri-
fying — about that image. It seemed to be
demanding something, and suddenly I real-
ized what it was. It wanted me! I seemed
to feel a sort of secret, dark thrill emanat-
ing from it, like the electric tingle in the
air before a tliunderstorm. There was some
power in this thing, immense and terrifying

WEIRD TALES

power (iiat gave the impression of damned-
up forces waiting for release. Not physical
power I could understand and combat or
run from, but something far more subtle;
something uncanny and indescribable, and it
was all the more frightening because I was
aware of it, but could not explain nor un-
derstand it.

"It seemed as if I were hypnotized. I
could feel the room begin to whirl about
me slowly, like a carousel when it’s just
starting, and my legs began to tremble and
weaken. In another instant I should have
been on my knees before the green idol
v/hen tlie spell was broken by a pleasant
voice; 'You are admiring our latest acquisi-
tion?'

<<TT WAS a very handsome young man
J- who stood beside me, not more than
twenty-two or -three, I judged, with a pale
olive complexion, long brown eyes under
slightly drooping lids with haughty brows,
and hair so sledc and black and glossy it
seemed to fit his head like a skullcap of pat-
ent leather. He wore a well-cut morning
coat and striped trousers, and there was a
good pearl in his black poplin ascot tie.

"He must have seen the relief in my face,
for he laughed before he spoke again, a
friendly, soft laugh that reassured me. 'I
am Kabanta Sikra Roy,’ he told me. 'My dad
owns this place and I help him out occa-
sionally. When I’m not working here I
study medicine at N. Y. U.’

" 'Is this image — or idol, or whatever you
call it — for sale?’ I asked him, more to steady
my nerves by conversation than anything
else.

"The look he gave me was an odd one.
I couldn’t make out if he were angry or
amused, but in a moment he laughed again,
and when he smiled his whole face lighted
up. 'Of course, everything in the shop’s for
safe, including the proprietors — at a price,’
he answered, 'but I don’t thinlj you’d be in-
terested in buying it.’

“ 'I should say not. But I just wondered.
Isn’t it some sort of god, or something?’

“ 'Quite so. It is the Great Mahadeva,
third, but by far the most important member
of the Hindu Triad, sometimes known as
Siva the Destroyer.’

"I looked at the thing again and it seemed

even mote repulsive than before. *I
shouldn’t think you’d find a quick sale for
it,’ I suggested.

“ 'We don’t expect to. Perhaps we’ll not
sell it at all. In case we never find a buyer
for it, we can put in our spare time wor-
shiping at its shrine.’

'"The utter cynicism of his reply grated
on me, then I remembered having heard
that many high caste Hindus have no more
real faith in their gods than the educated
Greeks and Romans had in theirs. But be-
fore I could be rude enough to ask if he
really believed such nonsense, he had gently
shepherded me away from the niche and was
showing me some exquisitely carved ame-
thysts. Before I left we found we had a
dozen friends in common and he’d extended
and I’d accepted an invitation to see Life
With Father and go dancing at the Cotillion
Room afterward.

"That began the acquaintance that ripened
almost overnight into intimacy. Kabanta
was a delightful playfellow. His father must
have been enormously rich, for everything
that had come to him by inheritance had
been given every chance to develop. The
final result was this tall, sender olive com-
plexioned man with the sleek hair, handsome
features and confident though slightly def-
erential manner. Before we knew it we
were desperately in love.

"No” — her listless manner gathered ani-
mation with the recital — "it wasn’t what
you could call love; it was more like be-
witchment. When we met I felt the thrill
of it; it seemed almost to lift the hair on my
head and make me dizzy, and when we were
together it seemed as if we were the only
two people in the world, as if we were cut
off from everyone and everything. He had
the softest, most musical voice I had ever
heard, and the things he said were like
poetry by Laurence Hope. Besides that,
every normal woman has a masochistic
streak buried somewhere deep in her nature,
and the thought of the mysterious, glamor-
ous East and the guarded, prisoned life of
the zenana has an almost irresistible appeal
to us when we’re in certain moods. So, one
night when we were driving home from
New York in his sports roadster and he
asked me if I cared for him I told him
that I loved him with my heart and soul and

THE GREEN GOD’S RING

spirit. I did, too — then. There was a full
moon that night, and I was fairl7 breathless
with the sweet delirium of love when he
took me in his arms and kissed me. It was
like being hypnotized and conscious at the
same time. Then, just before W'e said good
night, he asked me to come to The Light of
Asia next evening after closing time and
plight our troth in Eastern fashion.

"I had no idea what was coming, but I
was fairly palpitant with anticipation when
I knocked softly on the door of the closed
shop shortly after sunset the next evening.

"Kahanta himself let me in, and I almost
swooned at sight of him. Every shred of
his Americanism seemed to have fallen away,
for he was in full Oriental dress, a long,
tight-waisted frock coat of purple satin with
a high neck and long, tight sleeves, tight
trousers of white satin and bright red leather
shoes turned up at the toes and heavily em-
broidered with gold, and on his head was
the most gorgeous piece of silk brocade I’d
ever seen wrapped into a turban and deco-
rated with a diamond aigret. About his neck
were looped not one nor two but three
long strands of pearls — pink-white, green-
white and pure-white — and I gasped with
amazement at sight of them. There couldn’t
have been one in the three strands that was
worth less than a hundred dollars, and each
of the three strands had at least a hundred
gems in it. The man wore twenty or thirty
thousand dollars W'orth of pearls as non-
chalantly as a shop girl might have worn
a string of dime store beads.

" 'Come in. White Moghra Blossom,’ he
told me. 'All is prepared.’

"Tlae shop was in total darkness except
for the glow of two silver lamps that burned
perfumed oil before the niche in which the
Green God crouched. 'You’ll find the gar-
ments of betrothal in there,’ Kahanta whis-
pered as he led me to a door at the rear,
'and there’s a picture of a Hindu woman
wearing clothes like those laid out for you
to serve as a model. Do not be long, O Star
of My Delight, O Sweetly Scented Bower of
Jasmine. I swoon for the sight of you ar-
rayed to vow love undying.’

<‘TN THE little anteroom was a long,
J- three-paneled mirror in which I could
see myself from all sides, a dressing-table

set wdth toilet articles and cosmetics, and my
costume draped across a cliair. On the dress-
ing-table was an exquisite small picture of a
Hindu girl in full regalia, and I slipped my
Western clothes off and dressed myself in
the Eastern garments, copying the pictured
bride as closely as I could. There were only
three garments — a little sleevelesss bodice
like a zouave jacket of green silk dotted v/ith
bright yellow discs and fastened at the front
with a gold clasp, a pair of long, tight plum-
colored silk trousers embroidered with pink
rosebuds, and a shawl of thin, almost trans-
parent purple silk tissue fringed with gold
tassels and worked with intricate designs of
lotus buds and flowers in pink and green
sequins. When I’d slipped the bodice and
trousers on I draped the veil around me,
letting it hang down behind like an apron
and tying it in front in a bow knot with the
ends tucked inside the tight w'aistband of the
trousers. It was astonishing how modest
such a scanty costume could be. Tliere was
less of me exposed than if I’d been wearing
a halter and shorts, and not much more than
if I’d worn one of the bare-midriff evening
dresses just then becoming fashionable. For
ray feet there was a pair of bell toe rings,
little clusters of silver bells set close to-
gether like grapes in a bunch that tinkled
with a whirring chime almost like a whistle
each time I took a step after I’d slipped them
on my little toes, and a pair of heavy silver
anklets with a fringe of silver tassels that
flowed down from the ankle to the floor
and almost hid my feet and jingled every
time I moved. On my right wrist I hung a
gold slave bracelet with silver chains, each
ending in a ball of somber-gleaming garnet,
and over my left hand I slipped a heavy
sand-moulded bracelet of silver that must
have weighed a full half pound. I combed
my hair straight back from my forehead,
drawing it so tightly tliat there was not a
trace of wave left in it, and then I braided
it into a queue, lacing strands of imitation
emeralds and garlands of white jasmine in
the plait. When this was done I darkened
my eyebrows with a cosmetic pencil, raising
them and accenting their arch to the 'flying
gull’ curv'e so much admired in the East,
and rubbed green eye-shadow upon my lids.
Over my head I draped a long blue veil sewn
thickly with silver sequins and crowned it

WEIRD TALES

with a chaplet of yellow rosebuds. Last of
all there was a heavy gold circlet like a clip-
earring to go into my left nostril, and a
single opal screw-earring to fasten in the
tight, giving the impression that my nose
had been pierced for the jewels, and a tiny,
star-shaped patch of red court plaster to fix
between my brows like a caste mark.

“There is a saying clothes don’t make the
man, but it’s just the opposite with a woman.
When I’d put those Oriental garments on I
feli myself an Eastern woman who had
never known and never wished for any other
life except that behind the purdah, and all
1 wished to do was cast myself prostrate be-
fore Kabanta, tell him he was my lord, my
master .and my god, and press my lips against
the gold-embroidered tips of his red slip-
pers till he gave me leave to rise. I was
shaking as if with chill when I stepped from
the little anteroom accompanied by the sil-
very chiming of my anklets and toe rings.

"Kabanta had set a fire glowing in a sil-
ver bowl before the Green God, and when
I joined him he put seven sticks of sandal-
wood into my hands, telling me to walk
around the brazier seven times, dropping
a stick of the scented wood on the fire each
time I made a circuit and repeating Hindu
invocations after him. When this was done
he poured a little scented water from a sil-
ver pitcher into my cupped hands, and this I
sprinkled on the flames, then knelt across
the fire from him witli outstretched hands
palm-upward over the blaze while I swore to
love him, and him only, tliroughout this
life and the seven cycles to come. I re-
member part of the oath I took: 'To be one
in body and soul with him as gold and the
br.icelet or water and the wave are one.’

"'XTien I had sworn this oatli he slipped
a lieavy gold ring — tiiis! — on my finger,
and told me I was pledged to him for all
time and eternity, mat Siva the Destroyer
was witness to my pledge and would avenge
my falseness if I broke my vow. It was tlien
for the first time I heard of the pischa,
bhirta and preta, shahini and rakashasha. It
all seemed horrible and fantastic as he told
it, but I believed it implicitly — tlien.’’ A
little rueful smile touched her pale lips. "I’m
afraid that I believe it now, too, sir; but for
a little while I didn’t, and so — so my poor
lover is dead.”

"Pativre enfant,” de Grandin murmured.
"Ma pauvre belle creature. And then?”
'"Then came the war. You know how lit-
the pretense of neutrality there was. Am.eri-
cans were crossing into Canada by droves to
join up, and everywhere the question was
not 'WUl we get into it?’ but 'When?' I
could fairly see my lover in the gorgeous
uniform of a risaldar lieutenant or captain
in the Indian Army, leading his troop of
wild Patans into battle, but Kabanta made
no move. When our own boys were drafted
he was deferred as a medical-student. At
last I couldn’t stand it any longer. One eve-
ning at the shore I found courage to speak.
'Master and Lord,’ I asked him — we used
such language to each other in private — ‘is
it not time that you were belting on vour
sword to fight for freedom?’

" 'Freedom, White Blossom of the
Moghra Tree?’ he answered with a laugh.
'Who is free? Art thou?'

“ Thou art my lord and I thy slave,’ I
answered as he had taught me.

" 'And are the people of my father's
country free? You know that they are net.
For generations they have groaned beneath
the Western tyrant’s lash. Now these Euro-
pean dogs are at eacli other’s throats. Should
I take sides in their curs’ fight? What dif-
ference does it make to me which of them
destroys the others?’

" 'But you’re American,’ I protested. 'Tire
Japanese have attacked us. The Gemaans
and Italians have declared war on us — ’

" 'Be silent!’ he commanded, and his voice
was no longer the soft voice that I loved.
'Women w'ere made to serve, not to advise
their masters of their duty.’

" 'But, Kabanta — ’

" 'I told you to be still!’ he nearly shouted.
‘Does the slave dare disobey her master's
command? Down, creature, down upon your
knees and beg my pardon for your inso-
lence — ’

“ 'You can’t be serious!’ I gasped as he
grasped me by tlie hair and began forcing
my head down. We’d been playing at this
game of slave and master — dancing girl and
maharajah — and Td found it amusing, even
thrilling, after a fashion. But it had only
been pretense — like a ‘dress-up party’ or t.he
ritual of a sorority where you addressed
someone vou’d known since childhood as

THE GREEN GOD’S RING

Queen or Empress, or by some other high-
sounding title, knowing all the while that
she was just your next door neighbor or a
girl with whom you’d gone to grammar
sdiool. Now, suddenly, it dawned on me
that it had not been play with him. As
thoroughly Americanized as he appeared, he
was still an Oriental underneath, with all the
Oriental’s cynicism about women and all an
Eastern man’s exalted opinion of his own
importance. Besides, he was hurting me
terribly as he wound his fingers in my hair.
'Let me go!’ I demanded angrily. 'How dare
you?’

'' 'How dare I? Gracious Mahadeva, bear
the brazen Western hussy speak!’ he almost
choked. He drew my face close to his and
asked in a fierce whisper, 'Do you know
wh.it you vowed that night at The Light
of Asia?'

" 'I vowed I’d always love you, but — ’

" 'You’d always love me!’ he mocked.
'You vowed far more than that, my Scented
Bower of Delight. You vowed that from
that minute you would be my thing and
diattel — avowed yourself to Siva as a volun-
tary offering, and accepted me as the God’s
representative. As Gods are to humanity,
so am I to you, O creature lower tlian the
dust. You’re mine to do witli as I please,
and right now it pleases me to chastise you
for your insolence.’ Deliberately, while he
held my head back with one hand in my
hair, he drew one of his moccasins off and
struck me across the mouth with its heel. I
could feel a thin trickle of blood between my
lips and the scream I was about to utter died
in my throat.

' 'Down!’ he commanded. 'Down on your
face and beg for mercy. If you are truly
penitent perhaps I shall forgive your inso-
lence.’

MIGHT have yielded finally, for flesh

-L and blood can stand only so much, and
suddenly I was terribly afraid of him, but
when I was almost beyond resistance we
heard voices in the distance, and saw a light
coming toward us on the beach. 'Don’t think
that I’ve forgiven you,’ he told me as he
pushed me from him. 'Before I take you
back you’ll have to walk barefoot across hot
coals and abase yourself lower than the
dust — ’

“Despite the pain of my bruised lips I
laughed. 'If you think I’ll ever see you
again, or let you come within speaking dis-
tance — ’ I began, but his laugh was louder
than mine.

" 'If you think you can get away, or ever
be free from your servitude to me, you’ll
find that you’re mistaken,’ he jeered. 'You
are Siva’s, and mine, for all eternity. My
shadow is upon you and my ting is on your
finger. Try to escape the one or take the
other off.’

WRENCHED at the ring he’d put on
-L my hand. It w'ouldn’t budge. Again and
again I tried to get it off. No use. It seemed
to have grown fast to the flesh; the more I
tried to force it off the tighter it seemed to
cling, and all the time Kabanta stood there
smiling at me with a look of devilish, goad-
ing derision on his dark handsome features.
At last I gave up trying and almost faint-
ing with humiliation and the pain from my
bruised mouth I turned and ran away. I
found my car in the parking lot and drove
home at breakneck speed. I suppose Ka-
banta managed to get a taxi. I don’t know.
I never saw him again.”

"Tres hon,” de Grandin nodded approval
as she completed her story. "That is good.
’That is very good, indeed, ma. otstUone.”

"Is it?” the irony of her reply was razor-
thin.

"Is it not?”

"It is not.”

"Pourquoi? Nom d’un chameau enfumS!
For why?”

"Because he kept his word, sir. His
shadow is upon me and his ring immovably
upon my finger. Last year I met Wade
Hardison, and it was love at first sight. Not
fascination nor physical attraction, but love,
real love; the good, clean, wholesome love
a man and w'oman ought to have for each
other if they expect to spend their lives to-
gether. Our engagement was announced at
Christmas, and — •”

''Et puis?” he prompted as her voice broke
on a soundless sob.

"Then I heard from Kabanta. It w'as a
post card — just a common penny post card,
unsigned and undated, and it carried just
eleven words of mess.age: 'When you re-
move the ring you are absolved from your

WEIRD TAI^S

oath,’ He hadn’t signed it, as I said, but I
knew’ instantly it was from him.

"I tried desperately to get the ring off,
w’ound my fingers witli silk, used soap and
olive oil, held my hand in ice cold water
— no use.. It wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t even
turn it on my finger. It is as if the metal
had grown to my flesh and become part of
me. I didn’t dare tell anyone about it,
they wouldn’t have believed me, and some-
how I didn’t have the courage to go to a
jeweler’s and have it filed off, so . . .”

'Tlie silence that ensued lasted so long one
might have thought the girl had fainted,
but die short, irregular, spasmotic swelling
of her throat told us she was fighting hard
to master her emotion. At last:

"Two days ago,” she whispered so low
we had to bend to catch her words, "I had
another note. 'He shall never call you his,’
was all it said. There was no signature, but
I knew only too well who the sender was.

'"rhen 1 told Wade about it, but he just
laughed. Oh, if only 1 had had the courage
to postpone our wedding Wade might be
alive now. There’s no use fighting against
Fate,” her voice rose to a thin thread of
hysteria. “I might as well confess myself
defeated, go back to Kabanta and take what-
ever punishment he cares to inflict. I’m hope-
lessly enmeshed, entrapped — ensnared! I am
Siva’s toy and plaything, and Kabanta is the
Green God’s representative!” She roused to
a sitting posture, then fell back, burying
her face in the pillow and shaking with
heart-breaking sobs.

"Kabanta is a species of a cockroach, and
Siva but an ape-faced piece of green stone,”
de Grandin answered in a hard, sharp voice.
“I, Jules de Grandin tell you so, Madamoi-
selle; anon I shall say the same thing to
them, but much more forcefully. Yes, cer-
tainly, of course.”

<^rpHAT dame’s as nutty as a fruit cake,”
-E Costello confided as we left the Thur-
mond house. "She goes an’ gits herself in-
volved with one o’ these here fancy Hindu
fellies, an’ he goes an’ tells her a pack o’
nonsense, an’ she falls fer it like a ton o’
brick. As if they wuz anny such things as
Shivas an’ shahinnies an’ raytors an’ th’ rest
o’ it! Begob, I’d sooner belave in — ”

"You and I do not believe, my friend,”

de Grandin interrupted seriously, "but there
are millions who do, and the power of their
believing makes a great force — ”

“Oh, come!” I scoffed. "You never mean
to tell us that mere cumulative power of
belief can create hobgoblins and bugaboos?”
"V raiment," he nodded soberly. "It is in-
deed unfortunately so, my friend. Thoughts
are things, and sometimes most unpleasant
things. Yes, certainly.”

"Nonsense!” I rejoined sharply. "I’m
willing to agree that Melanie could have
been imposed on. The world is full of other-
wise quite sane people who are willing to
believe the moon is made of green cheese
if they’re told so impressively enough. I’ll
even go so far as to concede she thinks she
can’t get the ring off. We’ve all seen the
cases of strange inhibitions, people who were
convinced they couldn’t go past a certain
spot — can’t go off tlie block in which they
live, for instance. She’s probably uncon-
sciously crooked her finger when she tried
to pull it off. The very fact she found ex-
cuses to put off going to a jeweler’s to have
it filed off shows she’s laboring under a de-
lusion. Besides, we all know those Hindus
are adepts at hypnotism — ”

"Ah, bah!" he broke in. "You are even
more mistaken than usual. Friend Trow-
bridge. "Have you by any chance read
Darkness Out of the East by our good friend
John Thunstone?”

“No,” I confessed, "but—”

"But be damned and stewed in boiling
oil for Satan’s supper. In his book Friend
’Thunstone points out that the rite of walk-
ing barefoot seven times around a living
fire and throwing fuel and water on it W'hile
sacred mantras are recited is the most sol-
emn manner of pronouncing an irrevocable
oath. It is thus the neophyte is oath-bound
to the service of the temple where she is
to wait upon the gods, it is so when the wife
binds herself forever to the service and sub-
jection of her lord and husband. When that
poor one performed that ceremony she un-
dertook an oath-bound obligation which
every Hindu firmly believes the gods them-
selves cannot break. She is pledged by fire
and water for all time and eternity to the
man who put the ring of Siva on her finger.
While I talked to her I observed the amu-
let. It bears the device of a woman held in

THE GREEN GOD’S RING

unbreakable embrace by Four-Faced Siva,
and under it is written in Hindustani, 'As
the gods are to mankind so is the one to
whom I vow myself to me. I have said it.’

"As for her having the ring filed off — she
was wiser than she knew when she refrained
from that.”

"How d’ye mean?” Costello and I chor-
used.

“I saw an instance of it once in Goa,
Portuguese India. A wealthy Portuguese
planter’s femme de la main gauche had an
affaire with a Hindu while her protector
was away on business. She was inveigled into
taking such a vow as Mademoiselle Thur-
mond took, and into having such a ring
slipped on her finger. When she would have
broken with her Hindu lover and returned
to her pouTvoyer she too found tlie ring im-
movable, and hastened to a jeweler’s to have
it filed off. Tiens, the life went out of her
as the gold band was sawn asunder.”

"You mean she dropped dead of a
stroke?” I asked.

"I mean she died, my friend. I was pres-
ent at the autopsy, and every symptom
pointed to snake bite — except the stubborn
fact that there had been no snake. We had
the testimony of the jeweler and his two
assistants; we had the testimony of a woman
friend who went with her to the shop. All
were agreed there had been no snake near
her. She was not bitten; she merely fell
down dead as the gold band came off.”

"O.K., sor; if ye say it. I’ll belave it,
even if I know ’t’aint so,” Costello agreed.
"What’s next?”

"I think we should go to the morgue.
The autopsy should be complete by this
time, and I am interested in the outcome.”

D r. JASON PARNELL, the coroner’s
physician, fanned himself with a sheaf
of death certificates, and mopped his stream-
ing brow with a silk handkerchief. "I’m
damned if I can make it out,” he confessed
irritably. 'Tve checked and rechecked
everything, and the answer’s the same each
time. Only it doesn’t make sense.””

"Ou’est-ce done}" de Grandin demanded.
"How do you say?”

“That youngster has no business being
dead than you or I. There wasn’t a God’s-
earthly thing the matter with him from a

pathological standpoint. He was perfect.
Healthiest specimen I ever worked on. If
he’d been shot, stabbed or run down by a
motor car I could have understood it; but
here he is, as physiologically perfect as an
athlete, with positively no signs of trauma
of any sort — except that he’s as dead as a
herring.”

"You mean you couldn’t find a symp-
tom — ” I began, and he caught me up be-
fore I had a chance to finish.

"Just that, Trowbridge. You said it. Not
a single, solitary one. ’There is no sign of
syncope, asphyxia or coma, no trace of any
functional or organic weakness. Dammit
man, the fellow didn’t die, he just stopped
living — and for no apparent reason. What’n
hell am I goin’ to t^ the jury at tlie in-
quest?”

"Tiens, mon ami, that is your problem,
I damn think,” de Grandin answered. “We
have one of our own to struggle with. ’There
is that to do which needs immediate doing,
and how we are to do it only le bon Dieu
knows. Name of a little blue man, but it is
the enigma, I tell you.”

Sergeant Costello looked unhappily from
Parnell to de Grandin. "Sure, sors, ’tis th’
screwiest business Tve ever seen entirely,”
he declared. "First th’ pore young felley
topples over dead as mutton, then his pore
forsaken bride tells us a story as would make
th’ hair creep on yer neck, an’ now you tell
us that th’ pore lad died o’ nothin’ a-tall.
Mother o’ Moses, ’tis Jerry Costello as don’t
know if he’s cornin’ or goin’ or where from
an’ where to. Can I use yer ’phone, Doc?”
he asked Parnell. "Belike th’ bhoys at Head-
quarters would like to know what Tm
about.”

We waited while he dialed Headquar-
ters, heard him bark a question, and saw a
look of utter unbelief spread on his broad
perspiring face as some one at the other end
answered. ’’’Tain’t so!” he denied. "It
couldn’t be.

“We WU2 just up to see her, an’ she’s as
limp as a wet wash — ”

"What is it, mon Sergent}" de Grandin
asked. "Is it that — ”

"Ye can bet yer bottom dollar it is, sor,”
tlie Sergeant cut in almost savagely. "It sure
is, or Tm a monkey’s uncle. Miss ’TliurmonJ,
her we just seen layin’ in th’ bed so weak

WEIRD TALES

she couldn't hold up her head, has taken it
on th’ lam!”

"Diable!” de Grandin shot back. "It can-
not be.”

"That’s what I told ’em at Headquarters,
scr, but they insist they know what tliey’re
a-t.alkin’ about; an’ so does her old man.
iwas him as put the call in to be on th’
icokout fer her. It seems she lay in a half
stupor when we left her, an’ they’d left her
alone, thinkin’ she might git a bit o’ rest,
when zingo! up she bounces, runs to th’
garage where her car wniz parked, an’ rushes
down th’ street like th’ divil wuz on her
trail.”

"Hal" de Grandin’s hard, dry, barking
laugh had nothing whatever to do with
amusement. " Ah-ba-ha\ I am the greatest
stupid-head outside of a maison de jous, mes
amis. I might have damn anticipated it!
You say she ran as if the devil were behind
her? Alais non, it is not so. He was before
her. He called her and she answ'ered his
summons!”

"Whatever — ” I began, but Costello
caught the little Frenchman’s meaning.

"Then phat th’ divil are we waitin’ fer,
sor?” he demanded. "We know where he
hangs out. Let’s go an’ peel th’ livin’ hide
off ’im— ”

" Ma moi, cher Sergent, you take the
words out of my mouth," the small French-
man shot back. "Come, Friend Trowbridge,
let us be upon our way?”

"Where to?” I asked.

"Where to? Where in the foul name of
Satan but to that so vile shop called The
Light of Asia, where unless I am more
greatly mistaken than I think the dove goes
to a rendezvous with the serpent. Quickly.
Let us hasten, let us rush; let us fly, mes
amisV’

The rain that had been threatening since
early, afternoon came down in bucketsful as
we crept slowly through East Fifty-sixth
Street. It poured in miniature Niagaras
from cornices and rolled-up awnings, the
gutters were awash, the sidewalks almost
ankle-deep with water.

"Halte la!" ordered de Grandin, and I
edged the car close to the curb. "My friends,
we .ire arrived. Be quiet, if you please, make
no move unless I request it, and — ” he broke
o.T wlt!i a muttered "noni d’un coq!” as a

wind-whipped awning sluiced a sudden flood
of icy water over him, shook himself like *
spaniel emerging from a pond, and laid his
hand upon the brass knob of the highly var-
nished door.

A mazingly the door swung open at
his touch and we stepped into the dim
interior of Ihe Light of Asia.

The place was hke a church whose wor-
shipers had gone. Ihe air was redolent of
incense, tlie darkness was relieved by only a
dim, ruddy light, and all v/as silent — no, not
quite! At die far end of the long room a
voice was singing softly, a woman’s voice
raised in a trembling, tear-heavy contralto:

"Since I, O Lord, am nothing unto thee,
See here thy sword, 1 make it keen and
bright . .

" Alons, mes enfants, follow!” whispered
Jules de Grandin as he tiptoed toward the
rear of the shop.

Now the tableau came in view, clear-cut
as a scene upon a stage. In an elevated niche
like an altar place crouched a green stone
image slightly larger than man’s-size, the
sightless eyes of its four faces staring out in
cold, malevolent obliviousness. Below it,
cross-legged on a scarlet cushion, his hands
folded palm-upward in his lap, was a re-
markably handsome young man dressed in
an ornate Oriental costume, but these we
passed by at a glance, for in the foreground,
kneeling with her forehead pressed against
the floor, was Melanie Thurmond dressed as
she had been when she took her fateful vow
and had the ring of Siva put upon her hand.
Her hands w’cre raised above her bowed
head, and in them rested a long, cur\ed
scimitar, the ruddy lamplight gleaming on
its jeweled hilt and bright blade with omi-
nous redness.

"Forgive, forgive!” we heard her sob, and
saw her beat her forehead on the floor in
utter self-abasement. "Have pity on the
worm that creeps upon the dust before thy
feet — -”

"Forgiveness shall be thine,” the man re-
sponded slowly, "when dead kine crop the
grass, when the naked rend their clothes and
when a shining radiance becomes a void of
blackness.,

THE GREEN GOD’S RING

"Have mercy on the insect crawling at
thy feet,” the prostrate woman sobbed.
"Have pity on the lowly thing — ”

"Have done!” he ordered sharply. "Give
me tlie sword.”

She roused until she crouched upon her
knees before him, raised the scimitar and
pressed its blade against her lips and brow
in turn, then, head bent low, held it out to
him. He took it, balancing it between his
hands for a moment, then drew a silk hand-
kerchief from his sleeve and slowly began
polishing the blade with it. The woman bent
forward again to lay her brow against the
floor between her outstretched hands, then
straightened till she sat upon her crossed feet
and bent her head back till her slender
flowerlike throat was exposed. "I wait the
stroke of mercy. Master and Lord,” she
whispered as she closed her eyes. “ 'Twere
better far to die at thy hands than to live cut
off from the sunshine of thy favor. . . .”
There was something wrong with the
green god. It could not tell quite what it
was; it might have been a trick of light and
shadow, or tlie whorls of incense spiraling
around it, but 1 could have sworn its arms
were moving and its fixed, immobile fea-
tures changing expression.

There was something wrong with me,
too. A feeling of complete inadequacy
seemed to spread through me. My self-es-
teem seemed oozing out of every pore, my
legs felt weak, I had an almost irresistible
desire to drop upon my knees before the
great green idol.

"Oom, viani padme hong!” de Grandin
cried, his voice a little high and thin with
excitement. "Oom, man padme hong!”
Why I did it I had no idea, but suddenly
I echoed his invocation, at the top of my
voice, "Oom, mam padme hong!”

Costello’s rumbling bass took up the
chant, and crying the unfamiliar syllables
in chorus we advanced toward the seated
man and kneeling woman and the great,
green gloating idol. "Oom, mani padme
hong!”

The man half turned and raised his hands
in supplication to the image, but even as
he did so something seemed to happen in
the niche. The great green statue trembled
on its base, swayed backward, forward-
rocked as if it had been shaken by a sudden

blast of wind, then without warning top-
pled from its embrasure, crushing the man
seated at its feet as a dropped tile might
crush a beetle.

F or a long moment we stood staring at
the havoc, the fallen idol lying athwart
the crushed, broken body of the man, the
blood that spread in a wide, ever-broadening
pool about them, and the girl who wept
through lowered lids and beat her little fists
against her breast, unmindful of the tragedy.

"Quickly, my friends,” bade de Grandin.
"Go to the dressing room and find her
clothes, then join me here.

"Oom, mani palme hong! the gods are
dead, there is no power or potency in them,
my little flower,” he told the girl. "Oom,
mani padme hong!” he bent and took her
right hand in his, seizing the great ring
that glowed upon her forefinger and draw-
ing it away. "Oom, mani padme hong!
The olden gods are powerless — they have
gone back to tliat far hell fro.m whence they
hailed — ” The ring came off as if it had
been several sizes too large and he lifted her
in his arms gently.

"Make haste, my friends,” he urged.
"None saw us enter; none shall see us leave.
Tomorrow’s papers will record a mystery,
but there will be no mention of this poor
one’s name in it. Oh, be quick, I do beseech
you!”

“Now,” I demanded as I refilled the
glasses, "are you going to explain, or must
the Sergeant and I choke it out of you?”
The little laughter wrinkles at the outer
corners of his eyes deepened momentarily.
"Non, mes amis,” he replied, "violence v/ill
not be required, I assure you. First of all, I
assimie you would be interested to know how
it was we overcame tliat green monstrosity
and his attendant by your chant?”

"Nothin’ less, sor,” Costello answered.
"Bedad, I hadn’t anny idea what it meant,
or why we sang it, but I’m here to say it
sounded good to me — I got a kick out o’
repeating it wid ye, but why it wuz I dunno.”
"You know the history of Gautama
Buddha, one assumes?”

"I niver heard o’ him before, sor.”

Sue! dammage! However” — he paused to
take a long sip from his glass, then — "here
are the facts: Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

WEIRD TALES

was born in India some five hundred years
before the opening of our era. He grew up
in a land priest-ridden and god-ridden.
Tliere was no hope — no pride of ancestry
nor anticipation of immortality — for the
great mass of the people, who were forever
fixed in miserable existence by the rule of
caste and the divine commands of gods
whom we should call devils. Buddha saw
the wickedness of this, and after years of
meditation preached a new and hopeful gos-
el. He first denied the power of the gods
y whose authority the priests held sway,
and later denied their very existence. His
followers increased by thousands and by
tens of thousands; they washed the cursed
caste marks from their foreheads, proclaimed
themselves emancipated, denied the priests’
authority and the existence of the gods by
whom tliey had been terrorized and down-
trodden for generations. Guatama Buddha,
their leader, they hailed and honored with
tliis chant: 'Oom, mani padme hong! — Hail,
thou Gem of the Lotus 1’ From the Gulf of
Bengal to the Himalayas the thunder of
their greeting to their master rolled like a
mighty river of emancipation, and the power
of it emptied the rock temples of the olden
deities, left the priests without offerings on
which to fatten. Sometimes it even over-
threw the very evil gods themselves. I mean
that literally. There are recorded instances
where bands of Buddhists entering into
heathen temples have by the very repetiton
of 'Oom, man! padme hong!’ caused rock-
hewn effigies of those evil forces men called
Vishnu and Siva to topple from their altars.
Yes, it is so.

"En consequence tonight w’hen I saw the
poor misguided mademoiselle about to make
a sacrifice of herself to that four-faced cari-
cature of Satan I called to mind the greeting
to the Lord Gautama which in olden days
had rocked him and his kind from their
high thrones, and raised the ancient battle
cry of freedom once more. Tiens, he knew
his master, that one. 'Hie Lord Gautama
Buddha had driven him back to whatever
hell-pool he and his kind came from in the
olden days; his strength and power to drive
him back was still potent. Did not you see
it with your own four eyes, my friends?”

"U’m,” I admitted somewhat grudgingly.
"You think it was the power of the Green

God that called Melanie back to The Light
of Asia tonight?”

"Partly, beyond question. She wore his
ring, and material things have great power
on things spiritual, just as spiritual things
have much influence on the material. Also
it might well have been a case of utter frus-
tration. She might have said in effect, 'What
is the use?’ Her lover had been killed, her
hopes of happiness blasted, her whole world
knocked to pieces. She might well have rea-
soned: 'I am powerless to fight against my
fate. Tire strength of the Green God is too
great. I am doomed; why not admit it; why
struggle hopelessly and helplessly? Why not
go to Kabanta and admit my utter defeat,
the extinction of my "personality, and take
whatever punishment awaits me, even
though it be death? Sooner or later I must
yield. Why not sooner than later? To
struggle futilely is only to prolong the agony
and make his final triumph all the greater.’
’These things she may have said to herself.
Indeed, did she not intimate as much to us
when yve interydew'ed her?

"Yes,” he nodded like a china mandarin
on a mantelpiece, "it is unquestionably so,
my friends, and but for Jules de Grandin —
and the Lord Gautama Buddha assisted by
my good friends Trowbridge and Costello —
it might have been that way. Eh hien, I and
the Buddha, v.'ith your kind assistance, pat
an end to their fine schemes, did W’e not?”

"You seriously think it was the force of
the Green God that killed Wade Hardison? ’
I asked.

"I seriously do, my friend. That and
naught else. Tire Green One was a burning
glass that focused rays of hatred as a lens docs
sunlight, and through his power the never-
to-be-sufficiently-anathematized Kabanta was
enabled to destroy the poor young Hardison
completely.

H e stabbed a small, impressive fore-
finger at me. "Consider, if you p!e.ase:
What was the situation tonight? Siva had
triumphed. He had received a blood-sacri-
fice in the person of the poor young Hardi-
son; he was about to have another in the so
unfortunate Mademoiselle Melanie, then
pouf comes Jules de Grandin and Friend
Trowbridge and Friend Costello to repeat
the chant which in the olden days had driven

THE GREEN GOD'S RING

6 ?

him from power. Before the potenq? of our
chant to the Buddha the Green One felt his
power ebbing slowly from him as he re-
treated to that far place where he had been
driven aforetime by the Lord Gautama. And
what did he do as he fell back? Tenez, he
took revenge for his defeat on Kabanta. He
cast the statue of himself — a very flattering
likeness, no doubt — down from its altar
place and utterly crushed the man who had
almost but not quite enabled him to tri-
umph. He was like a naughty cliild that
kicks or bites the person who has promised
it a sweet, then tailed to make good the
promise—”

"But that idol was a senseless piece of
carved stone,” I protested. "How could
it — ”

"Ah bah, you irritate me, my friend. Of
course the idol was a senseless piece of stone,
but that for which it stood was neither stone
nor senseless. The idol was but the represen-

tation of the evil power lurking in the outer
darkness as the tiger lurks in ambush. Or
let us put it this way: The idol is the material
and visible door through which the spiritual
and invisible force of evil we call Siva
is enabled to penetrate into our human
world.

Through that doorway he came into the
world, through it he was forced to retreat
before the power of our denial of his po-
tency. So to speak, he slammed tlie door as
he retreated — and caught Kabanta between
door and jamb. En tout cos, he is dead, that
miserable Kabanta. We are w'ell rid of him,
and the door is fast closed on the evil entity
which he and the unwitting and unfortunate
Mademoiselle Melanie let back into the
world for a short time.

"Yes,” he nodded solemnly again. "It is
so. I say it. I also say that I should like
my glass refilled, if you will be so gracious.
Friend Trowbridge.”

The Castle

By GLENN WARD DRESBACH

TF YOU ever intend to buy
A castle, inspect it well —

Tliough the walls be strong and high —
And hear what the old wdves tell
Of it in the nearby town . . .

'\'hcn you have been up, go down
To the secret rooms below
And if you find the places
Where chains had worn the walls.

And water, dripping slow
As time, has left deep traces
In stone where dim light falls.

It is not the place you wanted . . .

It will be forever haunted.

Something at the barred door!

At the high, barred windows, the moan
Of wind? . . . Where flesh before
Has suffered too much, never more
Is it alone.

on the Threshold

By MANLY WADE WELLMAN

R. CALLENDER, as s’lperintend*
ent of an asylum for the insane,
was by training hard to daunt or
embarrass. But he was not enjoying this
final interview with a newly discharged pa-
tient. His round, kind face showed it.

"You are the second name on my list,
doctor," Rowley Thorne told him across the
desk in the office. "It is not a large list, but
everyone implicated in my unjust confine-
ment here shall suffer. You are second, I sa}-,
and I shall not delay long before giving you
my attention." Thorne's lead-colored tongue
moistened his lead-colored lips. "John Thun-
stone comes first.”

"You’re bitter,” said Callender, but neither
his tone nor his smile were convincing. “It'll
wear off after a day or so of freedom. Then
you’ll realize that I never bore you any ill-
will or showed special discri.mination. You
were committed to this institution through
the regular channels. Now that you’ve bec.n
re-examined and certified cured, I feel only
happiness for you."

“Cured!” snorted Thorne. His great hair-
less dome of a head lifted like the turret of
a rising submarine. His eyes gleamed abo\ e
his hooked nose like the muzzles of the
submarine’s guns. "I was never insane. False
testimony and stupid, arbitrary diagnosis
landed me here. It’s true that I had time in
your institution to perfect various knovvl-
edges by meditation. Those knowledges will
help me to deal with you all — as you de-
serve.”

His eyes gleamed palely. Dr. Callender
drew himself up.

"You’re aware,” said the doctor, "that
this kind of talk may well land you back in
the ward from which you’re being released.
If I call for yet another board of examina-
tion — ”

Heading by MATT FOX

Science calls it another dhnension, inysticisin calls it another plane, religion
another existence — all call it evil!

TKORNE ON THE THRESHOLD

Thorne sprang up from his chair. He was
big and burly in his shabby clothes. He
straightened to his full height, six feet and
a little more. No, decided the doctor, six
feet and considerably more. Six feet and a
half — perhaps six feet seven —

"You’re growing!” Callender cried, his
voice shrill with sudden baffled alarm.

"Call in your examiners.” It was Thorne’s
voice, though his tight-clamped gash of a
mouth did not seem even to twitcli. "Call
them in to see — ^to judge if I am crazy when
I claim powers beyond anything you ever — ”

He towered up and up, as if his wide slab
shoulders would hunch against the ceiling.
Dr. Callender, cowering in his chair despite
himself, thought a mist was thickening be-
fore his eyes in that quiet, brilliantly-lighted
room. Rowley Thorne’s fierce features
churned, or seemed to churn and blur and
writhe.

Next moment, abruptly, the illusion of
height and distortion — if it was an illusion
— flicked away. Rowley Thorne was leaning
across the desk.

"Cive me my release.” He picked up the
paper from in front of Dr. Callender, who
made no sound or motion to detain him. "If
you’re wise, you’ll pray never to see me
again. Except that prayer won’t help you.”

He tramped heavily out.

Left alone. Dr. Callender picked up his
telephone. Shakily he called Western Union,
and shakily he dictated a ware. Then he rose
and went to a wall cabinet, from which he
took a glass and a bottle. Flouting one of his
most rigid customs, he poured and drank
w'hiskey in solitude, and it w'as a double
drink at that. Tlien he poured another double
drink.

But he collapsed before he could lift it
to his moutli.

W HEN John Thunstone returned to New
York from the south, his air would
have puzzled even his few close friends. The
drawn, wondering expression around deep
dark eyes and heavy jaw' w’as contradicted
by the set of the giant shoulders and the
vigorous stride that took him about the busi-
ness he must now transact.

"Dr. Callender’s still in a coma,” said the
interne at the hospital. "Half a coma, any-
way. He rouses to take nourishment when
it’s put to his mouth. He turns over from

time to time, like a healthy sleeper. But his
pulse and his involuntary reactions are
feeble, and he doesn’t voluntarily respond to
voices or other stimuli more than once or
twice a day. Diagnosis not yet complete.”

"Which means that the doctors don't
know what’s the matter with him,” summed
up Thunstone. "Here’s my authorization
from his attending physician to see Dr.
Callender.”

The interne reflected that he had heard
somewhere how John Thunstone could
secure authorization to do almost anything.
He led the way along a hospital corridor and
to the private room where the patient lay,
quiet but not utterly limp. Callender’s face
was pale, his eyes closed tightly, but he
opened his mouth to allow a nurse to intro-
duce a spoonful of broth.

Thunstone looked, a long strong fore-
finger stroking his cropped black mustache.
Then he bent his giant body, his dark, well-
combed head close to Callender’s.

"Dr. Callender,” said Thunstone, quietly
but clearly. "Do you hear?”

It seemed that Callender did hear. He
closed his mouth again and Lifted his head
a dreamy, lanquid hair’s-width from the pil-
low. Then he relaxed again.

"You can understand me,” said Thun-
stone. "You sent me a warning wire. It was
forw’arded to me from New York. I hurried
here at once, to learn about Rowley Thorne. ’

"Tliorne,” muttered Callender, barely
louder than a faint echo. "Said I w’ould be
second.”

"You sent me a wire," repeated Tnun-
stone, bending still closer, "I am John Thun-
stone.”

"Tliunstone,” said Callender, an echo
even softer than before, "He will be first.”

And Callender subsided, with the gen-
tlest of sighs. He did not open his mouth
for more broth.

"He does not rouse more than that,”
volunteered the nurse. "It’s like anaesthesia
of some sort,”

"He will be first, I will be second,” said
Thunstone under his mustache, as if to
record the words on his memory. To the
interne he said, "VCTiat’s the full report on
him?”

They stepped into the corridor again. "He
was found unconscious in his office at the
asylum,” said the interne. "He had just re-

WEIRD TALES

leased that man you mentioned. Rowley
Thorne. Later a dcrk c.une in and found
him. There was some spilled liquor and at
first they thought intoxication. Then poison-
ing. Now nobody knows. Thorne was
checked by New York police, but there's
no evidence to hold him.”

"Did Thorne leave New York.^”

"He gave a Greenwich 'Village address.
The police have it. App.arently he’s still
there. Did you ever see a case like this,
Mr. Thunstone? It’s not quite human, some-
how'.”

Thunstone glanced back through the door-
w ay, eyeing the quiet form on the cot. "No,
not quite human,” he agreed slowly. "More
like something similar among — insects.”
Insects, Mr. Thunstone?”

“Tear open a wasp nest.”

"Not while I’m in my right mind,” de-
murred the interne, smiling slightly.

' In such nests,” went on Thunstone,
mildly lecturing, "you find other insects than
wasps. Sometimes caterpillers, sometimes
grubs, in some cases spiders. These strangers
are always motionless. They’ve been stung
into control by tlie wasps.”

"Because the wasps lay their eggs in
them,” replied the interne. He shrugged his
s'loulders to show that he disliked the idea.
"When the eggs hatch, the young start eat-
iiig.”

"But in the meantime,” Thunstone said,
"The prey remains alive but helpless, wait-
ing the pleasure and plans of its conqueror.”
He looked at Gallender, once again. "I won’t
talk about hypnosis in its very derived forms,
or about charms, spells and curses. You’re
studying medicine, and you’d better remain
an empiricist. But don’t worry about the
patient unless you hear that I’ve been de-
stroyed. And don’t w'ait with your breath
held to hear that, either. Goodbye, and
many thanks.

TTE LEFT. Outside it was evening, and he
.1 i sought his hotel.

Knowing in a general sort of w'ay what
might be at the door of his room, Thunstone
found it. A tiny fresh white bone from a
toad or a lizard, bound with a bow of red
silk floss and emitting a strange sickening
smell, had been pushed into the keyhole.
J-lis key, thoughtlessly inserted, would have
c.as'ied the bene. Girefully Thunstone pried

the grisly little object out, catching it in an
envelope.

"Standard obeah device,” he decided un-
der his breath. "‘Some day I’ll have time to
do a real research and decide whether this is
a primitive African method, as Seabrook and
Hurston say, or a modification of European
diabolism. Rowley , Thorne will try any-
thing.”

Now he studied the jamb and threshold
for possible smears of black liquid or scat-
terings of gray-white powder. He found
neither, sighed with relief, and finally un-
locked the door and let himself in.

He made two telephone calls, one to a
police executive of his acquaintance who
gave him Rowley Thorne’s Greenwich 'Vil-
lage address, the other to room service for
dinner and a drink to be sent up. The waiter
who brought the tray brought also a folded
newspaper. "Left for you downstairs, sir,"
he told Thunstone. "Room clerk asked me
to bring it to you.”

"Thanks,” said Thunstone. "Put it on the
table.”

When the man was gone, Thunstone took
the salt shaker from the dinner tray and
lightly sprinlded a few grains on the paper,
watching closely, then took it up and un-
folded it. On the upper margin was writ-
ten a name he knew and which reassured
him. He turned, to the classified advertise-
ments. Under "Personals” an item was
circled:

New threshold of spirit. You
may glimpse truths beyond imagina-
tion. Demonstrations nightly, 8:45.
Admission $1.

This was followed by an address, the
same Thunstone had just learned from his
friend of the police. .

"Mmmm,” said Thunstone, softly and
slowly. He put the paper aside and turned
to his dinner. He ate heartily, as always, but
first he salted every mouthful. He even
sprinkled a few grains in the brandy with
which he finished.

When the waiter had taken away tlie
dishes, Thunstone relaxed in his easiest
chair. From a bureau drawer he produced
a primitive-looking pipe with a bowl of dark
blue stone, carved carefully with figures that
looked like ideographs. It had been given

THORNE ON THE THRESHOLD

him, with reassurances as to its beneficent
power, by Long Spear, a Tsichah Indian, a
Phi Beta Kappa from a Southern university,
and a practising medicine man of his tribe.
Thunstone carefully filled the ancient bowl
wish tobacco mixed with kinnikinnik and,
grimacing a bit — for he did not like the
blend — smoked and smoked, blowing regu-
lar clouds in different directions.

When the pipe was finished, Thunstone
wrote a letter. It began with the sentence:
"If anything fatal or disabling overtakes
me within the next few days, please act on
the following information,” and went on for
several pages. When he had done and signed
his name, he placed it in an envelope ad-
dressed to one Jules de Grandin at Hunt-
ingdon, New Jersey.

Now, from his lower drawer he produced
a rectangular box the size of a dressing case,
which showed neither keyhole nor draw-
catch. By pressing at the middle of the lid,
Tliunstone made it fly open. Inside were
several objects, closely packed, and from
among tliem he selected a reliquary no more
than two inches by three. It was of ancient
brick-red clay, bound in silver, and its lid,
too, must be pressed in a certain way to open.

From it Thunstone took a tiny silver bell,
tliat clanged once as he lifted it, with a voice
that might have deafened had it not been
so sweetly clear. The bell was burnished
v/hite, but anyone could judge its age by the
primitive workmanship. It had been carved,
probably, from a block of metal, rather than
cast or hammered. Upon it were carved two
names, St. Cecelia and St. Dunstan, the
patrons of music and of silversmithing; and
a line of latin, in letters almost too fine too
read:

Est mea cunctorum terror von daemoniorum.

"My voice is the terror of all demons,”
said Thunstone aloud.

Muffling the little thimble-sized object in
his handkerchief, he stowed it in an inside
pocket. By now it was nearly eight o’clock.
He went out, mailed the letter, and signaled
a taxi.

O NCE there had been two rooms in the
apartment, one behind the other, per-
haps for parlor and dining room. By the
removal of the partition, these had become

one room, a spacious oblong. Its dull walls
were hung with gloomy<olored pictures and
two hangings with crude but effective figures
of men and animals embroidered upon them.
At the rear had been built a platform a few
inches above the floor level, its boards
painted a flat brown. Upon this stood a square
table covered with a black velvet cloth that
fell to the platform itself. The front part of
the room was filled with rows of folding
chairs, as for a lecture audience, and fully
fifty people sat there. Two candles on the
velvet-covered table gave light enough to
show the faces of the audience, some stupid,
some rapt, some greedy, some apprehensive.
There were more women than men, and
more shabby coats than new ones.

A rear door opened and a woman ap-
peared and mounted the platform. She was
youngish and wore many bangles and scarfs.
In the candle light her hair appeared to be
rather blatantly hannaed. From the open
door behind her stole soft, slow music, from
a little organ or perhajjs from a record on
a phonograph. The woman faced the audi-
ence, her dark eyes big and questioning.

"Do you know why you are here?” she
asked suddenly. "Is it for curiosity? Then
you may wish you had not come. For wor-
ship? But you may not be ready. Because a
call came to you that was more direct than
what you have read or heard? That will be
true for some of you.”

Her wide eyes fluttered shut. "I am a
medium, sensitive to spirits both alive and
dead. I feel influences, and not all of them
honest. In this room is a spy. He calls him-
self a journalist. Will he speak?”

There was some fidgeting and muttering,
but nobody spoke. The w'oman’s eyes
opened, and fixed coldly cm a young man in
the rear of the room. "You,” said the woman.
"You came here to find something sensa-
tional or ridiculous to write about. Get out. '

"I paid my dollar — ” began the reporter.

"It is returned to you,” she interrupted,
and he flinched, then stared at a crumpled
bit of paper that had sprung into view in
his empty hand. "Go, I tell you.”

"I have a right to stay,” insisted the news-
paper man, but even as he spoke he rose. It
was an involuntary motion, as though he had
been drawn erect by a noose of rope. Stum-
bling a little, he went to the door, opened it,
and departed.

WEIRD TALES

“Does anyone else come witli enmity or a
sneer?’’ challenged tlie woman on the plat-
form. “I see a girl on the front row. She
thought she would see or hear something
tonight that w'ould amuse her bridge club.
She has her dollar back. Let her leave.’’
There was no protest this time. The girl
rose and hurried out, clutching in her hand
the bill that had come from nowdiere.

'To the rest of you, I think, came a cleat
call,'' resumed tire speaker. “Why else, do
you think, you read a vague advertisement,
and on the strength of it made a journey and
paid money I know your hearts — or enough
of them to feel that you will listen. All I
have said is mere preparation, as though I
had swept humbly with a broom before the
man wdio will now show himself.”

She turned toward the door and nodded,
or perhaps bowed a little in reverence. Row-
ley Thorne appeared, and took her place
on the platform. The music stopped. ’There
was absolute silence.

Rowley Thorne stood behind the table,
leaning a little forward with his hands on
the velvet cover, so that he had a candle on
each side of him. He held himself rigid,
as if to photograph himself on the attentions
of those who watched — a man in dark
clothes, of great width, with a chest like a
keg and a squat-set hairless head. The
candle-glow from beneath his face undershot
him with light and made strange shadows
with the jut of his chin and brows, the
beaky curve of his big nose above his hard-
slashed mouth. His eyelids did not flutter,
but his gunmetal eyes roved restlessly, as
though searching every face in the audience.
“Watch me,” he bade after some seconds.

T O THOSE who watched he seemed to be
floating closer. But that was only an
illusion; he had spread his shoulders and
chest, so that they filled more closely the
space between the candles. His features,
too, broadened and turned heavy like the
memorial sculptures sometimes carved
gigantically on granite bluffs. Like a face
of granite his face maintained a tense im-
mobility, as though Rowley Thorne must
strive to keep it still. He grew. He was
size and a half now, and swelling. Abruptly
his face lost control, writhing and blurring,
and he lifted his hands fro.m the table to
stra'g’nten himself.

There were those in the audience who
wanted to move — toward Tliornc, or away
from him, or to fall on the floor. But none
moved, and none felt that they could move.
Thorne rose like a magnifying image on a
cinema screen, higher and more misty, seem-
ing to quiver and gesture madly as though
in a sjaasm of agony. One person, or perhaps
two, thought he was being lifted on an
elevator apparatus concealed behind the
velvet-draped table. But then he had stepped
sidewise into full view. No doubts were
possible now, he stood upon great columns
of legs, a gigantic and grotesque figure out
of proportion beyond any agromegalic freak
in a side show. His eyes glared as big as
peeled eggs, his mouth opened like the gap-
ing of a valise, and his hand like a great
spading fork moved toward the candle
flames. At its slap they went out, and there
was intense darkness in the room.

Quiet in that darkness, save for a woman
in the audience who was trying to stifle sobs.
Then the candles blazed up again. The
henna-haired opener of the program had
come back through the rear door and was
holding a twisted spill of paper to light the
two tags of radiance. Rowley Thorne leaned
against the wall at the rear of tlie platform,
gasping and sagging as though after a stag-
gering effort. He was back to his own pro-
portions again.

"I did that, not to startle you, but to con-
vince you,” he said between great gulps of
air. “Does anyone here doubt that 1 have
power? 1 have stood on the threshold of the
unthinkable — ^but from the unthinkable *1
bring knowledge for anyone who cares to
ask. Question, anyone? Question?”

The woman who had sobbed stood up. “1
came to learn what happened to my sister.
She quarrelled with her parents and left, and
we couldn’t trace — ”

"Write to Cleveland,” bade Rowley
Thorne, his breathing even now. “Write to
Dr. J. J. Avery, on East Twenty-third Street.
He w'iil tell you how your sister died.”
“Died!” echoed the woman faintly, and
sat down abruptly.

“Next question,” said Rowley ’Tliotne.

It came from another woman, w'ho had
lost an emerald-set bracelet that she called
a family heirloom. Thorne directed her to
search ir^ a locked trunk in her attic, looking
for a discarded red purse which held the

THORNE ON THE THRESHOLD

jewel. After that came a question from a
grizzled oldster about Bronx politics, which
Thorne settled readily but with patent dis-
dain. A young man’s query as to whether
he should marry the girl he had in mind
drew from Thorne a simple "Never,” stac-
cato but leering. There were other questions,
each answered readily, convincingly, and
more tlian often the reply was discouraging.
But Rowley Thorne was plain telling each
questioner the truth, the truth that he had
dredged up from somewhere unknown.

W HEN no more voices ventured, Rowley
Thorne permitted himself to show one
of his smiles, all hard mouth and no eyes.
"This has been a first meeting of what may
be a communion of help and knowledge,”
he said, vague and encouraging. "All who
stayed had belief and sympathy. You will
be welcome another time, and perhaps more
tilings will be revealed.”

He paused on exactly the proper note of
half-promise. He bowed in dism.issal. The
people rose from their seats and filed out,
murmuring to eacli other.

When the door closed, Thorne turned to
his henna-haired companion. “You got the
names?”

"Each as they stood up to speak,” she
nodded, above a pencilled list. "I took each
name as the person came in, and checked
them in their seats. Nobody saw me writing.
Their attention was all for you.”

"Good.” He took the paper from her. "I
count eleven who brought up private mat-
ters they might better have kept to them-
selves. And even the smallest inquiry was
admission of — ”

He broke off, glaring into the remote rear
corner, where lounged a human bulk as great
as his own.

"Continue,” said the voice of John Thun-
stone. "I am listening with the deepest in-
terest.”

Thorne and his companion faced savagely
toward the big man. The red-haired woman
drew herself up. "How did you come here?”
she demanded tremulously. “And how did
you remain without my knowledge?”

“Your mind-reading powers are not as
perfect as you think,” replied Thunstone,
rising from where he sat. "When I was a
boy I learned to think behind a wall. The
untrained minds of the others were open to

you, you could detect mockery and enmity
and banish those who felt it. Meanwhile I
had slipped in with the crowd and sat in this
dimmest corner.” He addressed Thorne.
"Why did' you break off. You were going
to say you had a hold on all who listened
to you here.”

Thorne’s lips twitched thinly and moistly.
“I venture to remind you that you are a
trespasser in a lodgings leased by myself.
If something tragic happened to you, the law
would reckon it no more than justified by
your intrusion.”

“Law!” echoed Thunstone, walking to-
ward him.

He and Thorne were very much of a size.
Each grinned with his lips and gazed with
hard, watcliful eyes. The red-haired woman
glanced from one to the other in plain terror.

“Law, Thorne!” said Thunstone again.
“You have a sound respect for such as help
you. I know' of nobody more bound by rules
than yourself. A hold, I w’as saying, on
those who heard and saw your performance
tonight. That checks alniost exactly with
w'hat I foresaw.”

"You know' so little that we pity you,"
taunted the red-haired woman.

"Store up your pity for your own needs,”
Rowley Thorne told her. “Thunstone does
not consider himself a pitiable figure. I per-
mit him to go on talking, for a little while.”

"The classic demonologists,” Thunstone
continued, "agree that tliose who attend evil
ceremonies and do not protest or rebel are
therefore sealed communicants of black wor-
ship. You’ve collected the beginnings of a
following, haven’t you, Thorne? You’re al-
ready planning how to rivet your hold on
every person — on this one by fear, on that
one by favor, on the other by blackmail.”

‘Tm able to stand alone,” grow'led Thorne
deeply.

“But those you serve demand w'orshippers,
and you must see to the supply. You hare
failed before. I know, because I caused the
failure. I have disrupted your ceremonies,
burned your books, discredited and dis-
graced you.” Thunstone’s hard smile grew
vzider. “I am your bad luck, Thorne.”

The red-haired woman had stooped,
twitching up her skirt. From a sheath
strapped to her leg she drew a slim dagger,
but paused, staring at it. “It’s broken,” she
muttered.

WEIRD TALES

"Even your tools fail you,” pronounced
Thuiistone.

Thorne, still standing on the dais, drew a
deep breath. It swelled hina like a hollow
figure of rubber.

The woman stared at him, gasped, and
drew away. She could not accustom herself
to the phenomenon. Thunstone smiled no
longer as he stepped up on the dais, close
to Thorne.

' I’m not afraid of you in any size or
shape,” he said.

A round Thunstone the air was close
- and hot, as though he had entered a
cave in the side of a volcano. The dimness
of the room seemed to take on a murky red
glow, but in that glow Thorne’s face and
outline grew no clearer. He only swelled.
He was already a head taller than Thunstone.

"Moloch, Lucifer, Pem.eoth,” Tliorne was
saying, as though to someone behind him,
"Anector, Somiator, sleep ye not"

"It is the unknown that terrifies,” re-
joined Thunstone, as though speaking a
rehearsed line in response to a cue. "I know
those names and for what beings they stand.
I am not afraid.”

"Awake, strong HoLaha,” chanted Thorne.
"Powerful Eabon, mighty Tetragramaton.
Athe, Stoch, Sada, Erohye!”

Thunstone felt around him the thicken-
ing, stifling heat, sensed the deepening of
the red glow. There was a crackle in the
air as of flames on the driest day of summer.
How true, mused Thunstone while he fixed
his eyes on the burgeoning form of his
enemy, was the instinct of the primitive
priest who first described hell as a place of
gloomy fires. . . .

Hands were reaching for Thunstone,
hands as large as platters. Thunstone smiled
again.

"Do you think I am afraid.^” he inquired
gently, and stepped forward within reach of
5ie hands.

A chorus of voices howled and jabbered,
like men trying to sound like animals, or
like animals tiydng to sound like men.
Thorne's great gouty fingers had seized
Thunstone’s shoulders, and swiftly released
their grip, while Thorne cursed as if in
sudden pain. For Thunstone had seized the
crumpled sleeves upon the mighty ridged
a-r:..;, twisting them so that they bound and

constricted like tourniquets. Thunstone's
clutch could not be broken.

Thorne’s hugeness above him heaved and
struggled. But it did not seem to have
gained weight in proportion to its size.
Thunstone’s own solidity anchored it down.
"To me!” Thorne was blaring. "To me,
you named and you nameless!”

They rallied to his call. Thunstone felt
blinded, and at the same time dazzled, by
that hot redness; but beings were there,
many and near, around him. He clung to
the sleeves he had grasped, and Thorne
could not break away. Stifled, numbed,
Thunstone yet summoned his strength, and
with a mighty wrench toppled ’Thorne’s
overgrown form to its knees. That was
enough for the moment. He let go and
drove a hand under his coat to the inside
pocket.

With a full-armed sweep, he swung the
little silver bell.

I T’S voice, unthinkably huge as the mas-
ter chime of a great carillon, rang joy-
ously in that dark lost corner. It drowned
the voices that howled at it. It clanged
them into dismayed silence, and they shrank
from it. Thunstone knew that they shrank,
though mercifully he could not see them
plainly. They retreated, and with them
ebbed the redness and the numbness, and
the breathless heat. Thorne was trying to
say something, either defiant or pleading,
from farther away and farther still. The bell
drowned his speech, too. Tilings became
plainer to the eye now, the room was just an
ordinary dim room. Thunstone looked for
Thorne, and saw him and saw through him,
just as the giant outline faded like an image
from a screen when the projector’s light
winks out.

Thunstone stood quiet a moment, breath-
ing deeply. He cuddled the little bell in his
p'alm to muffle its voice, and gazed at it with
gratitude.

"I remember part of the old Hymn of
the Bell,” he said aloud. " 'I call the peo-
ple, I summon the clergy; I weep the de-
parted, I put the pestilence to flight, I shatter
the thunderbolts, I proclaim the Sabbaths.’ ”
He looked around for the red-haired woman.
“A holy man whom once I helped gave me
this bell as a gift. It was made long ago,
he told me, to exorcise evil spirits. This is

THORNE ON THE THRESHOLD

the third time I have used it successfully.”

Carefully he returned the bit of silver to
his pocket. Stepping from the dais, he
walked across the room and switched on a
light that threw white brilliance everywhere.
Turning his head, he looked hard for some
sign that Rowley Thorne ha^d been there.
There was none. Tramping a few steps
more, John Thunstone opened two windows.

'This place smells most unoriginally of
burning,” he commented.

The red-haired woman crouched motion-
less in the farthest corner from the dais
where Thunstone and Thorne had stood to-
gether. Stooping above her, Thunstone
touched her shoulder. She looked up at
him, and rose slowly. Her face was as pale
as tallow.

“What will you do with me.?” she man-
aged to ask.

"Leave you to think how narrowly you
escaped,” he replied. "You were not a
lieutenant of Thome, only his servitor.
Plainly you know little or nothing of what
he was really trying to do. I recommend
that you review the storj' of the sorcerer’s
apprentice, and keep clear in the future of
all supernatural matters. For you have used
up a good deal of your normal luck in
escaping tonight.”

"But what — what — ” she stammered.

"The explanation is simple, if you care to
accept it. Thorne was on the threshold of
— something. Science calls it another di-

mension, mysticism calls it another plane,
religion calls it anSther existence. He could
communicate with entities beyond, and
claim them for allies. He was able to draw
some powers and knowledges, such as his
ability to prophesy to those dupes who came.
Such powers might have been useful to him,
and rankly terrible to the normal world.”
Thunstone produced his pipe. "By the way,
I am heartily in favor of the normal world.”

Near'ny stood a telephone on a bracket.
Without asking permission, Thunstone
picked it up and dialed a number. The
nurse who answered told him jubilantly that
Dr. Callender had suddenly awakened from
his trance, very lively, cheerful and hungry.

"Congratulate him for me,” said Thun-
stone, "and say that I’ll join him in a late
supper.”

He hung up and continued his explana-
tion.

'"Thorne gambled everything when he
called his allies into this normal region of
life to help him. 1 wanted him to do that.
Because, when defeated, they would go
back. And with them they would take
Thorne. I don't dare hope that he’s gone
for good, but he’ll have considerable diffi-
culty in returning to us.”

"But where?” pleaded the woman.
“Where did he go?”

"Tlie lesson to be learned from all I
have said and done,” Thunstone assured her
gently, “is not to inquire into such things.”

We ^

O^ms

By RAY BRADBURY

I T STARTED out to be just another
poem. And then David began sweating
over it, stalking the rooms, talking to
himself more than ever before in the long,
poorly-paid years. So intent was he upon
tJic poem’s facets that Lisa felt forgotten,
left out, put away until such time as he fin-
ished v.'riting and could notice her again.

Then, finally — the poem was completed.

With the ink still wet upon an old en-
velope’s back, he gave it to her with trem-
bling fingers, his eyes red-rimmed and shin-
ing witli a hot, inspired light. A.nd she read
it.

"David — ” she murmured. Her hand be-
gan to shake in sympathy with his.

~T V 'T' T V ▼ T T ▼ y y T v v ▼ y

The square of paper was a brilliantly sunlit casement through which one
might gaze into another and brighter land

Heading by A. E. TILBURNE

THE POEMS

"It’s good, isn’t it?” he cried. Damn
^ood!”

The cottage whirled around Lisa in a
wooden torrent. Gazing at the paper she
experienced sensations as if words were
melting, flowing into animate things. Tire
paper was a square, brilliantly sunlit case-
meat through which one might lean into
another and brighter amber land! Her mind
swung pendulum-wise. She had to clutch,
crying out fearfully, at the ledges of this
incredible window to support herself from
being flung headlong into three-dimensional
impossibility!

"David, how strange and wonderful and
— frightening.”

It was as if she held a tube of light cupped
in her hands, through which she could race
into a vast space of singing and color and
new sensation. Somehow, David had caught
up, netted, skeined, imbedded reality, sub-
stance, atoms — mounting them upon paper
with a simple imprisonment of ink!

He described the green, moist verdure of
the dell, tiie eucalyptus trees and the birds
flowing through their high, swaying
brandies. And the flowers cupping the pro-
pelled humming of bees.

"It is good, David. The very finest poem
you’ve ever written!” She felt her heart beat
swiftly with the idea and urge that came
to her in the next moment. She felt that
she must see the dell, to compare its quiet
contents with those of this poem. She took
David’s arm. "Darling, let’s walk down tlie
road — now.”

In high spirits, David agreed, and they
set out together, from their lonely little
house in the hills. Half down the road she
changed her mind and wanted to retreat,
but she brushed the thought aside with a
move of her fine, thinly sculptured face.
It seemed ominously dark for this time of
day, down there toward the end of the path.
She talked lightly to shield her apprehen-
sion:

"You’ve worked so hard, so long, to write
the perfect poem. I knew you’d succeed
some day. I guess this is it.”

"Thanks to a patient wife,” he said.

'They rounded a bend of gigantic rock
ana twilight came as swiftly as a purple
veil drawn down.

"David!”

In the unexpected dimness slie clutched
and found his arm and held to him. "What’s
happened? Is this the dell?”

"Yes, of course it is.”

"But, it’s so dark!”

"Well — ^j'e.s — it is — ” He sounded at a
loss.

"Tlie flowers are gone!”

"I saw tliem early this morning; they
can’t be gone!”

"You wrote about them in the poem. And
where are the grape vines?”

"They must be here. It’s only been an
hour or more. It’s too dark. Let’s go back.”
He sounded afraid himself, peering into the
uneven light.

"I can’t find anything, David. ’The grass
is gone, and the trees and bushes and vines,
all gone!”

She cried it out, then stopped, and it fell
upon them, the unnatural blank spaced si-
lence, a vague timelessness, windlessness, a
vaammed sucked out feeling that oppressed
and panicked them.

He swore softly and there was no echo.
"It’s too dark to tell now. It’ll all be here
tomorrow.”

"But what if it never comes back?” She
began to shiver.

"What are you raving about?”

She held the poem out. It glowed quietly
with a steady pure yellow shining, like a
small niche in which a candle steadily lived.

"You’ve written the perfect poem. Too
perfect. 'That’s what you’ve done.” She heard
herself talking, tonelessly, far away.

She read the poem again. And a coldness
moved through her.

"The dell is here. Reading this is like
opening a gate upon a path and walking
knee-high in grass, smelling blue grapes,
hearing bees in yellow transits on the air,
and the wind carrying birds upon it. The
paper dissolves into things, sun, water, col-
ors and life. It’s not symbols or reading any
more, it’s LWING!”

"No,” he said. "You’re wrong. It’s
crazy.”

T hey ran up the path together. A wind
came to meet them after they were free
of the lightle.ss vacuum behind them.

In their small, meagerly furnished cot-
tage they sat at the window, staring dowi-

WEIRD TALES

at the dell. All around was the unchanged
light of mid-afternoon. Not dimmed or
diffused or silent as down in the cup of
rocks.

"It’s not true. Poems don’t work that
way,” he said.

"Words are symbols. They conjure up
images in the mind.”

"Have I done more than that?” he de-
manded. "And how did I do it, I ask you?”
He rattled the paper, scowling intently at
each line. "Have I made more than symbols
with a form of matter and~enersy. Have I
compressed, concentrated, dehydrated life?
Does matter pass into and through my mind,
like light through a magnifying glass to be
foaissed into one narrow, magnificent
blazing apex of fire? Can I etch life, burn it
onto paper, with that flame? Gods in heaven.
I’m going mad with thought!”

A wind circled the house.

"If we are not crazy, the two of us,”
said Lisa, stiflFening at the sound of the
wind, "there is one way to prove our sus-
picions.”

"How?”

"Cage the wind.”

"Cage it? Bar it up? BuUd a mortar of
ink around it?”

She nodded.

"No, I won’t fool myself.” He jerked his
head. Wetting his lips, he sat for a long
wiule. Then, cursing at his own curiosity,
he walked to the table and fumbled self-
cor sciouslv with pen and ink. He looked
at her, then at the windy light outside. Dip-
ping his pen, he flowed it out onto paper
in regular dark miracles.

Instantly, the wind vanished.

"'Tlie wind,” he said. "It’s caged. The ink
is dry.”

/OVER his shoulder she read it, became
\J immersed in its cool heady current,
smelling far oceans tainted on it, odors of
distant w'hcat acres and green corn and the
s’larp brick and cement smell of cities far
away.

David stood up so quickly the chair fell
back Nee an old thin woman. Like a blind
man he W'alked down the hill toward the
dell, not turning, even when Lisa called
after him, frantically.

When he returned he was by turns

hysterical and Immensely calm. He col-
lapsed in a chair. By night, he was smoking
his pipe, eyes closed, talking on and on,
as calmly as possible.

'Tve got power now no man ever had.

I don’t know its extensions, its boundaries
or its governing limits. Somewhere, the erv
chantment ends. Oh, my ^od, Lisa, you
should see what I’ve done to that dell. Its
gone, all gone, stripped to the very raw
primordial bones of its former self. And
the beaut)’ is here!” He opened his eyes and
stared at the poem, as at the Holy Grail.
"Captured forever, a few bars of midnight
ink on paper! I’ll be the greatest poet in
history! I’ve always dreamed of that.”

"I’m afraid, David. Let’s tear up the
poems and get away from here!”

"Move away? Now?”

"It’s dangerous. What if your power at-
tends beyond the valley?”

His eyes shone fiercely. "Then I can de-
stroy the universe and immortalize it at one
and the same instant. It’s in the power of a
sonnet, if I choose to write it.”

"But you won't write it, promise me,
David?”

He seemed not to hear her. He seemed'
to be listening to a cosmic music, a move-
ment of bird wings very high and clear. He
seemed to be wondering how long this land
had waited here, for centuries perhaps, vrait-
ing for a poet to come and drink of its
power. This valley seemed like the center
of the universe, novr.

"It would be a magnificent poem,” he
said, thoughtfully. '"Tlie most magnificent
poem ever written, shamming Keats and
Shelley and Browning and all the rest. A
poem about the universe. But no.” He shook
his head sadly. "I guess I won’t ever write
that poem.”

Breathless, Lisa waited in the long silence.
Another wind came from across tlie world
to replace the one newly imprisoned. She
let out her breath, at ease.

"For a moment I was afraid you’d over-
stepped the boundary and taken in all the
winds of the earth. It’s ail right now.”

"All right, hell,” he cried, happily. "It’s
marvelous!”

And he caught hold of her, and ki.«sed
her again and again.

Fift)' poems were written in fifty days.

THE POEMS

Poems about a rock, a stem, a blossom,
a pebble, an ant, a dropped feather, a rain-
drop, an avalandae, a dried skull, a dropped
key, a fingernail, a shattered light bulb.

P,ecognition came upon him like a rain
shower. The poems were bought and read
across the world. Critics referred to the
masierpieces as " — cliunks of amber in
which are caught whole portions of life and
living — ■' — each poem a window looking
out upon the world — ”

He was suddenly a very famous man. It
took him many days to believe it. When he
saw his name on tire printed books he didn’t
believe it, and said so. And when he read
the critics columns he didn’t believe them
either.

Then it beg.in to make a flame inside him,
groviing up, climbing and consuming his
Body and legs and arms and face.

Amidst the sound and glory, she pressed
her dreek to his and whispered:

"'This is your perfect hour. When will
there ever be a more perfect time than this?
Never again.”

He showed her the letters as they ar-
rived.

"See? This letter. From New York.” He
blinked rapidly and couldn’t sit still. "They
want me to write more poems. Thousands
more. Look at this letter. Here.” He gave
it to her. "That editor says that if I can
write so fine and great about a pebble or a
drop of water, think what I can do when I
— well experiment with real life. Real life.
Nothing big. An amoeba perhaps. Or, well,
just this morning, I saw a bird — ”

"A bird?” She stiffened and waited for
him to answer.

"Yes, a hummingbird — hovering, settling,
rising —

'"ifou didn’t . . . ?”

"Why NOT? Only a bird. One bird out
of a billion,” he said self-consciously. "One
little bird, one little poem. You can’t deny
me that.”

"One amoeba,” she repeated, tonelessly.
"And then next it will be one dog. one
man, one city, one continent, one universe!”

"Nonsense.” His cheek twitched. He
paced the room, fingering back his dark hair.
"You dramatize things. Well, - after all,
what's one dog, even, or to go one step
furtl'.er, one man?"

She sighed. "It’s the very thing you talked
of with fear, the danger we spoke of that
first time we knew your power. Remember,
David, it’s not really yours, it was only an
accident our coming here to the valley
house — ”

He swore softly. "Who cares whether
it was accident or Fate? The tiling that
counts is that I’m here, now, and they’re —
they’re — He paused, flushing.

'"riiey’re what?” she prompted.

"They’re calling me the greatest poet who
ever lived!”

"It’ll ruin you.”

"Let it ruin me, then! Let’s have silence,
now.”

He stalked into his den and sat restlessly
studying the dirt road. While in this mood,
he saw a small brown dog come patting
along the road, raising little dust-tufts be-
hind.

"And a damn good poet I am,” he whis-
pered, angrily, taking out pen and paper.
He scratched out four lines swiftly.

’File dog’s barking came in even shrill
intervals upon the air as it circled a tree and
bounded a green bush. Quite unexpectedly,
half over one leap across a vine, the barking
ceased, and the dog fell apart in the air,
inch by inch, and vanished.

Locked in his den, he composed at a
furious pace, counting pebbles in the gar-
den and changing them to stars simply by
giving them mention, immortalizing clouds,
hornets, bees, lightning and thunder with
a few pen flourishes.

It was inevitable that some of his more
secret poems should be stumbled upon and
read by his wife.

Coming home from a long afternoon walk
he found her with the poems lying all un-
folded upon her lap.

"David,” she demanded. "What does
this mean?” She was very cold and shaken
by it. "This poem. First a dog. Then a cat,
some sheep and — finally — a man!”

He seized the papers from her. “So
what!” Sliding them in a drawer, he
slammed it, violently. "He was just an old
man, they were old sheep, and it was a
microbe-infested terrier! The world breathes
better without them!’’

"But here, THIS poem, too.” She held it
straight out before her, eyes widened. "A

■78

WEIRD TALES

woman. Tliree children from Charlottes-
ville!"

"All right, so you don’t like it!” he said,
furiously. "An artist has to experiment.
Witii everytliing! I can’t just stand still and
do the same thing over and over. I’ve got
greater plans than you think. Yes, really
good, fine plans. I’ve decided to write about
even thing. I’ll dissect the heavens if I wish,
tip down the worlds, toy with suns if I damn
please!”

"David,” she said, shocked.

"Well, I will! I will!”

"You’re such a child, David. I should
Isave known. If this goes on, I can’t stay
here with you.”

"You’ll have to stay,” he said.

"What do you mean?”

He didn’t know what he meant himself.
He looked around, helplessly and then de-
d.’.red, "I mean. I mean — if you try to go
all I have to do is sit at my desk and de-
scribe you in ink ...”

"You ...” she said, dazedly.

She began to cry. Very silently, with no
noise, her shoulders moved, as she sank
down on a chair.

"I’m sorry,” he said, lamely, hating the
scene. "I didn’t mean to say that, Lisa. For-
give me.” He came and laid a hand upon
her quivering body.

“I won’t leave you,” she said, finally.

And closing her eyes, she began to think.

I T WAS much later in the day when she
returned from a shopping trip to town
with bulging grocery sacks and a large
gleaming bottle of champagne.

David looked at it and laughed aloud.
"Celebrating, are we.?”

"Yes,” she said, giving him the bottle
and an opener. "Celebrating you as the
world’s greatest poet!”

"1 detect sarcasm, Lisa,” he said, pouring
drinks. "Here’s a toast to the — the universe.”
He drank. "Good stuff.” He pointed at hers.
"Drink up. What’s wrong?” Her eyes looked
wet and sad about something;

She refilled his glass and lifted her own.
"May we always be together. Always.”

The room tilted. "It’s hitting me,” he ob-
served very seriously, sitting down so as not
to fall. "On an empty stomach I drank. Oh,
Lord! ’’

He sat for ten minutes while she refilled
his glass. She seemed very happy suddenly,
for no reason. He sat scowling, thinking,
looking at his pen and ink and paper, fiy--
ing to make a decision. "Lisa?”

"Yes?” She was now preparing supper,
singing.

"I feel in a mood. I have been consid-
ering all afternoon and — ”

"And what, darling?"

"I am going to write the greatest poem
in history — NOW!”

She felt her heart flutter.

"Will your poem be about the vallq?”
He smirked. "No. No! Bigger than that.
Much bigger!”

"I’m afraid I’m not much good at guess-
ing,” she confessed.

"Simple,” he said, gulping another drink
of champagne. Nice of her to think of buy-
ing it, it stimulated his thoughts. He held
up his pen and dipped it in ink. "I shall
write my poem about the universe! Let me
see now ...”

"David!”

He winced. "What?”

"Oh, nothing. Just, have some mere
champagne, darling.”

"Eh? ” He blinked fuzzily. "Don’t mind
if I do. Pour.”

She sat beside him, trying to be casual.
"TeU me again. What is it you’ll write?"
"About the universe, the stars, the epi-
leptic shamblings of comets, the blind black
seekings of meteors, the heated cmbnaces
and spawnings of giant suns, the cold, grace-
ful excursions of polar planets, asteroids
plummeting like paramecium under a gigan-
tic microscope, all and everything and any-
thing my mind lays claim to! Earth, sun,
stars!” he exclaimed.

"No!” she said, but caught herself. “I
mean, darling, don’t do it all at once. One
thing at a time — ”

"One at a time.” He made a face. '"That's
the way I’ve been doing things and I'm
tried to dandelions and d.aisies.”

He wrote upon the paper with the pen.
"What’re you doing?” she demanded,
catching his elbow.

"Let me alone!” He shook her off.

She saw the black words form:
"Illimitable universe, with stats and
planets and suns — ”

THE POEMS

She must have screamed,

"No, David, cross it out, before it’s too
late. Stop it!”

He gazed at her as through a long dark
tube, and her far away at the other end,
echoing. "Cross it out? ” he said. "Why, it’s
GOOD poetry! Not a line will I cross out.
I want to be a GOOD poet!’’

She fell across him, groping, finding the
pen. With one instantaneous slash, she
wiped out the words.

''Before the ink dr'tes, before it dries!’’
"Fool!" he shouted. "Let me alone!”

S HE ran to the window. The first evening
stars were still there, and the crescent
moon. She sobbed with relief. She swung
about to face him and walked toward him.
'T want to help you write your poem —
"Don’t need your help!”

"Are you blind? Do you realize the power
of your pen!”

’To distract him, slie poured more cham-
pagne, which he welcomed and drank.
"Ah," he sighed, dizzily. "My head spins.”
But it didn't stop him from writing, and
write he did, starting again on a new sheet
of paper;

"UNIVERSE — VAST UNIVERSE —
BILLION STARRED AND WIDE—”

She snatched frantically at shreds of things
to say, things to stave off his writing.

' "Tliat’s poor poetry,” she said.

"What do you mean ’poor’?” he wanted
to know, writing.

"You’ve got to start at the beginning
and build up,” she explained logically.
"Like a watch spring being wound or the
universe starting with a molecule building
on up through stars into a stellar cart-
wheel — ’’

He slow'ed his writing and scowled with
thought.

She hurried on, seeing this. "You see,
darling, you’ve let emotion run off with
you. "Tou can’t start with the big things.
Put them at the end of your poem. Build
to a climax!”

The ink was drj'ing. She stared at it as
it dried. In another sixty seconds —

He stopped writing. "Maybe you’re right.
Just maybe you are.” He put aside the pen
a moment.

“I know I’m right,” she said, lightly,

laughing. "Here. I'll just take the pen
and — there — ”

She had expected him to stop her, but
he was holding his pale brow and looking
pained with the ache in his eyes from the
drink.

She drew a bold line through his poem.
Her heart slowed.

“Now,” she said, solicitously, "you take
the pen, and I’ll help you. Start out wdth
small things and build, like an artist.”

His eyes were gray-filmed. “Maybe you’re
right, maybe, maybe.”

The wind howled outside.

“Catch the wind!” she cried, to give him
a minor triumph to satisfy his ego. "Catch
the wind!”

He stroked the pen "Caught it!” he bel-
lowed, drunkenly, weaving. "Caught the
wind! Made a cage of ink!”

"Catch the flowers!” she commanded, ex-
citedly. "Everyone in the valley! And the
grass!”

"There! Caught the flowers!”

“The hill next!” she said.

"The hill!”

"The valley!”

"The sunlight, the odors, the trees, the
shadows, the house and the garden, and the
things inside the house!”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he cried, going on and
on and on.

And while he wrote quickly she said,
"David, I love you. Forgive me for what
I do next, darling — ”

"What?” he asked, not having heard
her.

"Nothing at all. Except that we are never
satisfied and want to go on beyond proper
limits. You tried to do that, David, and it
was wrong.”

He nodded over his work. She kissed
him on the cheek. He reached up and
patted her chin. "Know what, lady?”
"What?”

"I think I like you, yes, sir, I think I
like you.”

She shook him. "Don’t go to sleep, David,
don’t.”

“Want to sleep. Want to sleep.”

“Later, darling. When you’ve finished
your poem, your last great poem, the very
finest one, David. Listen to me—”

WEIRD TALES

He fumbled with the pen. "What’ll I
say?”

She smootlied his hair, touched his cheek
with her fingers and kissed him, tremblingly.
Then, closing her eyes, she began to dictate:

"There lived, a fine man n.amed David
and his wife’s name was Lisa and — ”

Tlie pen moved slowly, achingly, tircdly
forming words.

"Yes?” he prompted.

— and they lived in a house in the gar-
den of Eden — ”

He wrote again, tediously. She watched.

He raised his eyes. "Well? What’s
next?”

She looked at the house, and the night
outside, and the wind returned to sing in
her ears and she held his hands and kissed
his sleepy lips,

“That’s all, ” she said, "the ink is drying.”

T he publishers from New York visited
the valley months later and went back to
New York with only three pieces of paper
they had found blowing in the wind around
and about the raw% scarred, empty valley.

The publishers stared at one another,
blankly:

"Why, why, there was nothing left at all,”
they said. "Just bare rock, not a sign of
vegetation or humanitj’. 'Tlie home he lived
in — gone! The road, everytliing! He was
gone! His wfife, she W'as gone, too! Not a

word out of them. It was like a rivet flood
had washed through, scraping away tlie
whole countryside! Gone! Washed out! And
only three last poems to show for the whole
thing!”

No further word was ever received from
the poet or his wife. The Agricultural Col-
lege experts traveled hundreds of miles to
study the starkly denuded valley, and went
away shaking their heads and looking
pale.

But it is all simply found again.

You turn the pages of his last small thin
book and read the three poems.

She is there, pale and beautiful and im-
mortal; you smell the sweet warm flash of
her, young forever, hair blowing golden
upon the wind.

And next to her, upon the opposite page,
he stands gaunt, smiling, firm, hair like
raven’s hair, hands on hips, face raised to
look about him.

And on all sides of them, green with an
importal green, under a sapphire sky, w'ith
the odor of fat wine-grapes, with the grass
knee-high and bending to touch of exploring
feet, with the trails waiting for any reader
who takes them, one finds the valley, and the
house, and the deep rich peace of sunlight
and of moonlight and many stars, and the
two of them, he and she, walking through
it all, laughing together, forever and for-
ev'er.

o o A

HHe AMCCENrs OF
ARA0/A 0EUEVEP
THAT IF A HYAEMA .

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T//^ SUN Q

atiana

Heading by BORIS DOLGOV

T HEY’RE kind to me here, in their
way, with an impersonal sort of
kindness that has in it nothing of
warmth. Today, when I asked for paper and
ink, Myles, the attendant, clapped me on the
shoulder. "Going to write a letter, h’m,
Kerrj'? Well, that's fine. That’s cer’nly
fine.’’ There was a time, earlier, when 1 had
resented being patronized in this fashion.
For this is an institution for tlie mentally
afflicted.

And I am not insane.

But in the beginning I made the mistake
cf telling about Tatiana. Perhaps I did not
tell it well. My head ached from the heavy
air, thick with stale tobacco smoke; I w as
confused by the huge, hulking figures un-
seen, but sensed, beyond that bright white
light. Somehow I must have garbled the
story in the telling, and that is why they
sent me here. With passing time I’ve grown
convinced of this, and I’ve thought, "If I
could only set it down in black and white,
then maybe they’d see their mistake. Then

By HAROLD LAWLOR

TATIANA

maybe it would sound less like the raving
of a lunatic.”

So today I asked for paper and ink to
write — not a letter, as Myles thought, but
a story.

This story:

T im and I first came upon her one rain-
rent November evening, huddled on the
doorstep of our apartment house. She was
crouched there in the attitude of Venner’s
Magdalene, the light from the foyer falling
through the glass door, turning her uncov-
ered golden red hair to a shimmering fall
of molten copper.

There was no room to pass her rain-spat-
tered polo-coated figure, as Tim, after an
incurious glance, proceeded to do. But I
stopped. It’s strange now to remember that
I was the one who stopped. For I was always
the timid one. My twin brother, Tim, was
the older (by ten minutes!) and it was as if
this seniority had always given him the right
to be the leader. Certainly he was invariably
the aggressor in any situation. I was the
quiet twin — ^the shy one, overlooked in the
background.

But I stopped as if even then I sensed the
eerie, other worldly quality that I will always
associate with the memory of Tatiana. Later,
too, I was to recall the curious reluctance
with whicli Tim accepted her from the first.
Almost as if he’d known that in her strange
wake were to trail love and hate and conflict.

But now I bent over the girl. "Is anything
the matter? Can we help you?”

Bright headlights danced on the coppery
hair as she shook her head.

"Come on, Kerry!” Tim was clutching at
my arm.

But I couldn’t seem to take my eyes from
the girl. "Can’t we take you home?”

She lifted her head at that, and I was not
surprised to see that her face lived up to the
lovely promise of her hair.

"WTiere do you live?” I persisted, while
Tim stood by, fuming.

Her eyes were long and green and in-
scrutable, and held neither appeal nor fright.
She pointed vaguely. "Beyond the farthest
star.”

Even Tim was momentarily arrested by
{Rat. Then again he dragged insistently at
my arm. Old habit reasserted itself. This
time I no longer resisted, but prepared to

follow in his lead. But before we could move
away, the girl spoke.

"I’m Tatiana. I — ” She broke off, looking
faintly surprised. Then the green eyes rolled
upward, and slowly she toppled outs^’ard
toward the sidewalk.

I caught her just before her bright head
would have struck the cement.

U PSTAIRS, in the living room, I set her
down carefully on out shabby divan,
and poured brandy from the precious bottle
we’d been saving. But I needn’t have. For
she was sitting up, almost at once. So com-
posedly, that Tim looked suspicious, and
even I knew a momentary doubt.

"It’s just — just that I’m hungry,” she said
apologetically.

I nodded, knowing she spoke the truth.
That greenish-white pallor couldn’t be faked.
I looked over to where Tim was lounging
alertly, warily, against the door frame.
"Would you mind, Tim? There ought to
be an egg or two in the icebox. And would
you make some coffee?”

Even then I remember thinking. "Imagine
me, giving Tim orders!”

He said nothing. He just looked at me,
and I knew my life would be a minor hell
for days. Tim could be mean in so many
little ways. But now he went kitchenware .
And, looking at the girl, I felt indifferent
for once to Tim’s uncertain temper.

"We eat out mostly,” I explained to the
girl, who’d been watching us in silence.
"Everything is strictly from bachelorhood
around here. I’m Kerry Murnane.” I nodded
toward the door through which Tim had
disappeared. "And that’s my twin brother,
Tim.”

"Yes.” She nodded, almost as if she'd
known. "Tim, he does not like me. But
you — ” She regarded me sagely. "I think you
will come to love me. And what Tatiana
thinks, comes true.”

Well! I blinked. But her slanted green
eyes semed to hold no guile.

I said, faintly amused. "And you knelt
there in the rain knowing — I would come
along?”

"Oh, no.” The shining hair dusted her
shoulders. "I thought, 'I will rest here, and
— somebody nice will come along.’ And — ”
Her slim hands solemnly tossed the unfin-
ished statement into the air.

WEIRD TALES

Evidently I was to infer that what she’d
thought had come true. The girl was being
ridiculous, merely. Then why should I know
this vague, mounting sense of alarm?

She was smiling secretively as she stood
up and slipped off the polo-coat to reveal a
simple, unadorned black dress beneath. It
was tight over her tilted breasts and rounded
hips, and her waist was incredibly small.

Idiotically, I found myself wondering
how it would feel to hold such loveliness in
my arms. Idiotically, because I was not
usually so quickly susceptible.

Luckily, Tim's voice called from the
kitchen to cut through my ridiculous mood,

T hough obviously ravenous, the girl ate
her scrambled eggs and toast as daintily
as a cat, at once absorbed yet detached. Tim
neglected his food, and w'as sunk in a seem-
ingly sullen mood. As for me, • I watched
Tatiana, fascinated by I know not what
about her. Watched, and listened to the rain
tick-tocking against the window.

It was an odd scene. Tire three of us there
in the small bright kitchen. The setting so
strangely normal, the atmosphere suddenly
so strangely sinister.

For it was sinister. A chill wind seemed
to blow through the kitchen and I shivered
slightly. Tliat shiver we try to pass off lightly
by laughing and saying, “Someone must be
walking over my grave." There was some-
thing decidedly unpleasant in the air. It was
as if we were waiting. Waiting for die
tragedy that was on its way.

I stirred uncomfortably. Me and my wild
Irish im.-igination!

When she’d drained the last of her sec-
ond cup of coffee, Tatiana looked at us both,
commanding attention.

"You have been very kind to a stranger.
You shall find that Tatiana is not ungrate-
ful."

Significantly, wordlessly enjoining our at-
tention, she held out slim white hands,
empty palms upward. Slowly she doubled
the.m into fists, rested them against her fore-
head, closed her eyes.

“For Kerry, for Tim,” she whispered.
The rest was lost in soundless movement of
her lips.

I Vv’as afraid to look at Tim, but I knew
his left eyebrow must be climbing upward
quizzically. And 1 knew his narrowed eyes

would be hard, not on the girl, but on n!;
for getting us into this.

Presently, with a Gioconda smile, Tatiana
again extended her hands. Slowly she
opened them.

Tim and I gaped together.

Resting on each white palm was some-
thing that resembled an unset diamond-
diamonds whose facets reflected rainbow
fragments from the overhead light.

“Take them,” Tatiana said. “They are
yours.”

“But how — ?” I faltered. “Where — ?”

She looked away, her eyes narrowing
reminiscently. “I thought. The boys should
not go unrewarded.’ And I thought, 'A dia-
mind, perhaps, for each, would be very,
very nice.’ I’ve told you.” She shrugged in-
differently. “What Tatiana thinks, comes
true.”

“You mean,” I said, "you only thought
you’d like to have a diamond for each of
us, and — ”

"Sol” Tatiana smiled fondly as at a wide-
eyed child. “'They were there.”

I looked in amazement at Tim. But his
handsome mouth was twisted, and his eyes
on Tatiana were coldly contemptuous.

"And now, toots,” he sneered, “let’s see
you think about a couple of Cadillacs.”

Tatiana winced, then lifted her chin de-
fiantly.

“Don’t, Tim,” I ?aid. I couldn’t seem to
look away from the gem lying on my palm.

“I will go now,” Tatiana murmured, ris-
ing. But it was evidently a polite phrase
which she didn’t mean. She might have said,
"Try to let me go.” For the small, wise
smile said it. And the arched brows. And
the shining head, tilted ever so slightly to-
ward her left shoulder, A change seemed
to have come over her. For she appeared to
be playing with us, cat-like.

Yet — I couldn’t help it! — I said, “You
can’t go. The rain. Your hair. It’s so beau-
tiful.”

Tim laughed at me sharply. “You sound
like the dialogue in a play by Tcliekov."
Flis sneer deepened. “From 'beyond the
farthest star,’ ” he quoted. “With no hat and
two pop-bottles that we’re supposed to be-
lieve are diamonds.” He stood up so abruptly
that his chair screeclied protesting!-,’ on the
linoleum. He looked with hatred at Tatiana,
“Stay the night, then, since you must. You

TATIANA

can sleep on the living room sofa. I wouldn’t
send a dog out into that.”

The three of us listened to the rain as if
it were the most important thing of all, just
then. As if, by concentrating on the sound
of the drops lashing futilely against the
pane, could escape the uncomfortable ten-
sion here within the room.

I couldn’t understand Tim’s look of
hatred. It seemed far too strong an emotion
for the girl to have caused in him. For what
had she done? Nothing. Nothing to make
Tim react so violently. And yet it was as if
they continued a quarrel begun before I was
present — a quarrel whose origin I did not
know.

I think now it was some sixth sense warn-
ing Tim against the girl — as it should have
warned me. But then I only looked at her —
and listened to the rain.

"In the morning,” Tim finished, almost
vioously, "get out of here!”

But "ratiana only smded.

"V7TT, when we were in our bedroom,
-I- Tim’s anger seemed to evaporate as
quickly as it had come, and he appeared less
certain of himself than I had ever known
him. So apparent was the change in him that
I even ventured to ask, "Why did you say
that to her” — though at any other time I
would have been reluctant to risk his possible
irritation at the question.

Tim rubbed his forehead as if it ached.
Slowly he divested himself of his clothing,
tiirew his trousers across the back of a chair.
"Because — He turned to look at me, and I
could almost have sworn that fear lurked in
the depths of his dark eyes. "We should
have made her leave. Now. Tonight.”
There was a startled pause, then I went
over to rest my hand lightly on his arm.
"Tim, what is it? What’s so alarming about
Tatiana? Why do you seem to hate her so?”
He looked at me, puzzled, and he sounded
half-ashamed, half-defiant when he an-
swered, "Because I’m afraid. Afraid, and I
don’t know why. But there’s something
about her — ”

I knew the puzzlement was in my own
eyes now. Tim — afraid! That couldn’t be!
I was the timid one— not Tim. And I cer-
tainly didn’t fear Tatiana. Slowly I tried to
find a reason for his fear.

"Is it the diamonds? ’’ I asked. "And the

talk about her thoughts coming true?” And
though I didn’t really believe it, I added,
"Because it’s probably nothing. A joke,
that she’ll explain in the morning.”

But Tim only shook his head stubbornly.
"You’ll see. You’ll be sorry we let her stay.”
Maybe it was the certainty in his voice.
Maybe his fear was contagious. Maybe it
was merely the cold damp air blowing
through our widely opened windows.

But I shivered again. And a curious con-
viction seized me that one day I would wish
I had listened to Tim.

W E AWOKE in the morning to the in-
comparable scent of coffee filling the
apartment. Tatiana had obviously risen be-
fore us.

Tim seemed more like himself this morn-
ing. But his manner was overlaid with some-
thing that was alien to him — something I
had to puzzle over before I recognized it for
what it was. Embarrassment. He wanted me
to forget his odd alarm of the night before.
And I, eager to see if Tatiana’s strange en-
chantment would survive the disillusioning
light of day, was only too willing to assume
that Tim was once more as he’d always
been.

Tatiana had chosen the chair directly be-
fore the kitchen window, and her hair was
a vivid blot against a world of white. The
rain had changed during the night to wet,
clinging snow, and the elms back of the
apartment house were gaudily decked out in
cotton and tinsel.

It started at once.

"Good morning,” she said. "And what
are you going to do today, Kerr)'?”

Ignoring Tim. Baiting Tim. Not imp-
ishly. Motivated by something more omi-
nous than mischief. I felt my heart sinking.
Who was this girl? Why was she here? Or
had her presence neither meaning nor pur-
pose? I was never to know.

Tim must have sensed the implied taunt
in her words, for he rose to it bluntly.
"You’re getting out. Kerry and I — ”

The kitchen crackled with antagonism. I
grew increasingly uneasy. I dropped a spoon.

Tatiana w'as shaking her head sadly, sure
of herself. “It’s too bad if Kerry and you
have made any plans. Because I think, Tim,
you’ll have a ten o’clock appointment with
Frank Warner.”

Sfi

WEIRD TALES

Tim sniffed contemptuously. "Don’t be
crazy. Frank’s in an Army camp down in
Texas.” He waited for 'Tatiana to speak,
but as she continued to remain silent, smil-
ing in superior fashion, he grew excited.
"Isn’t he, Kerry? We’re even keeping the
ke}'s of his house for him while he’s away,
aren’t we, Kerr)'?"

I couldn’t answer. It was unnerving to
listen to Tim, pleading, almost as if he
wanted to be convinced against his better
judgment that what he was saying was true.

Nor did it help matters any for Tatiana
only to repeat comfortably, ’’At ten o’clock.”
And she became intent upon spreading jelly
over her toast, as if she wished to indicate
that she'd grown weary of an absurd argu-
ment too greatly prolonged.

The thing was getting on my nerves. How
could she be so sure? For that matter, how
could she possibly have known of Frank
Warner?

The telephone shrilled in the gallery
leading from reception hall to dining room.

Tatiana smiled her secret half-smile, her
emerald eyes absorbed as if set on some in-
ward vision. I felt that she was willing the
telephone to ring. I was sure of it.

The telephone grew insistent. But I
couldn’t have moved. I think I knew then.

Tim said something under his breath,
harshly. He stood up, his face hard. De-
fiantly he left the kitchen. I heard his heels
on the uncarpeted gallery floor. The bell
was silenced in the middle of an angry peal,
and then there was the low murmur of
Tim’s voice.

But I knew, even before he came back.
I could tell from his footsteps on the gallery
floor, lagging more and more as he ap-
proached the kitchen. When he came in
diere was a queer, unbelieving expression
on his face. He said what he had to say
lifelessly.

"It was Frank. He was given a medical
discharge. He wants me to meet him down-
town with his keys — at ten o’clock.”

And he looked at Tatiana then with such
a strange expression on his lean, handsome
face that I'll remember it always.

"^T^THEN Tim had gone without a good-

V bye, Tatiana washed the dishes and
I dried them. Later I was to think it odd
that I didn’t question her then about this

eerie faculty she possessed of making bet
thoughts come true.

Or did she?

Perhaps it was merely that she plucked
from the ether advance knowledge of
events already ordained. But that wouldn’t
explain the diamonds. They were tangible
enough. Although, of course, she might
already have had them in her possession.
But then why, in the name of all that was
holy, hadn’t she sold them to ward off her
seeming destitution? Unless, as Tim had
suggested, they were pop-bottles?

I shook my head, baffled, and watched
her rinse tlie dishpan, wipe it neatly, and
dry her hands on the kitchen towel.

"A very domestic scene,” she said de-
murely.

But it wasn’t. In my heart, 1 knew that
it wasn’t. Oh, the props w’ere all there. It
was Tatiana who didn’t belong. She seemed
a peri, come to play with earthly things.
And presently they would bore her. And
she would be gone.

She came to me, nearer, until the strange
eyes were glowing into mine and her hands
were on my shoulders. "I love you,” she
said huskily.

I could feel my breath come quicker. And
my ow’n eyes must have dilated, for ’Ta-
tiana’s bright head was suddenly a top
spinning dizzily before me. ’Tliere was a
thudding in my chest, a thickening in my
throat. '"Who are you? Where do you
come from? Why are you here?”

Again the Gioconda smile. ’’Does it
matter?”

And looking into her slumberous-Iidded
eyes, I knew that it did not. Her parted
lips were all I could see ... a venomous
flower, beckoning, luring, irresistible.

The room whirled, a carousel gone sud-
denly mad. I couldn’t stand this. This
sense of not being. This inexplicable ec-
stasy, twisting at me, tearing. Slowly 1 bent
my head, pressed my parted lips to hers, held
her softness crushingly against me.

When Tim came back at two, it was to
find Tatiana sitting on the sofa. I was on
the floor at her feet, my head in her lap.
I looked up at Tim standing under the arch
leading to the living room, and saw his
face slowly settling into implacable lines,
his eyes darkening with suppressed fury.

{Continued on page 88)

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(^Continued from page 86)

He came all the way into the room, and
stood looking down at us, his hands thrust
into his trousers pockets. And the hatred,
formerly directed at Tatiana alone, now in-
cluded me.

“So you’re still here,” he snapped to
Tatiana.

He reached down, caught my necktie in
his right hand, yanked me to my feet. "You
damned fool!” Anger made his voice
ragged. “I don’t know who she is, or what.
But anyone can see she’s a trouble-maker.”
Tatiana put her hands behind her head,
arched her body contentedly against the
sofa’s back. “Into everyone’s life trouble
must come. Is it important whether I am
the cause of it — or another?”

And at the sound of her murmurous voice
I said to Tim, shakily, “Take your hands
off me.”

His fist tightened first on my tie, then
he pushed me back onto the sofa. He
said, "The diamonds, in case you want to
know, are about two carats each in weight,
blue-white, of the finest water.” He took
his from his jsocket, looked at it for a
long moment, then tossed it into Tatiana’s
lap. “Go on, get out,” he said then, and
the quietness of his voice only emphasized
the sharpness of the command.

I stood up uncertainly. “Tim!”

Tatiana said lazily, “Until Kerry tells me
to go — I stay.”

Tim put his fists on his narrow hips,
looked at me challengingly. “Well?”

And Tatiana looked at me, and she, too,
said "Well?”

I T WAS up to me. I’ll always remem-
ber tliat scene, and my deepening sense
of shame because I was playing so unheroic
a part. It isn’t easy to change the habit of
a lifetime, if, indeed, it’s possible. Old
memories flooded back — Tim and I, always
together. Not in nearly thirty years had v/e
been separated. And it was 'Tim’s decisions
that had always been the right ones, always
decided our course of action. I wavered
helplessly.

As if she were reading my mind, Tatiana
said softly, “After all, Kerry, you had to
fall in love sometime. You know what’s
really the matter, don’t you? Tim — ^he hates
me, because I’ve come between you.”

TATIANA

' You don't understand.” I sank into a
lounge chair, covered my face with my
hands. "Tim isn’t guilty of some unwhole-
some jealousy. He wouldn’t cate if I’d
fallen in love with somebody else — some-
body — ”

"Ah! Tatiana came over to kneel be-
fore me, clasp her arms around my legs.
She raised her head, looked up into my
face, "Somebody — not me? Somebody

who would not really separate you. Oh,
I know. I might have made him like me,
but it was too late. The will to hate was
too strong.”

Tim laughed sharply, like a lash across
her words. But we hardly heard him. I
caught at her shoulders, bent forward to
kiss her swiftly.

"And I — I love you,” I said hopelessly.

She spread her hands. "Then it is so
very simple. Tim does not matter. Tell
me to stay. Tell Tim to go."

"Yeah, tell me to go,” Tim scoffed.

I rubbed my aching forehead. "I can’t,
Tatiana. How can I make you see? Per-
haps only a twin could understand. But
it’s as if Tim and I were two halves of a
whole. If we were estranged, I’d be only
half alive.”

She sank back on her heels, her eyes
studying my face. "You want me to go?”

"No.” And I knew I sounded like a fool.

Tim laughed again. "He seems unable
to make up his mind. He’s always been
like that.”

Involuntarily, I drew back at that laugh.
I suppose it seemed as if I cringed. I’ll
never forget the look on Tatiana’s face at
that. It had always been like this, I thought
dully. People seemed to like me well enough
at first. Until Tim came along, with his
way of making my every word and action
seem the inefliectual fumblings of a fool.

I sighed aloud, and Tatiana appeared to
come to a decision. She rose, and even I re-
coiled at the look she turned on Tim. Yet
her words, when they came, were more sad
than angry.

"You’ve succeeded W’ell, Tim. You’ve
turned Kerry into a creature without will
or initiative. But then, you've had a life-
time in which to succeed. How could I
hope to combat you?

Tim looked pleased with himself. Tati-
ana must have caught the last faint flicker

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of his expression as she slipped into her
polo-coat, belted it about her.

"I understand your satisfaction,” she said
coldly. "It is not easy to defeat Tatiana.
You may well look pleased with yourself.
But perhaps, even yet, you have not won.”
I made one last attempt, however feeble.
"Tatiana, don’t go. I love you.”

Her hand on the doorknob, she nodded,
but she might have been looking at a
stranger. "Yes, you do. You always will.”
Her eyes went to Tim, secure in his triumph,
though she continued to tallc to me. "And
I think some day, Kerry, you will grow to
hate Tim for coming between us — I really
think you will.”

Then she was gone, closing the door be-
hind her, leaving me staring at Tim — at
nothing. And for once Tim evaded my eyes.

W AS it that very night? Or nights later?

How can I remember? But there came
a night, and the sound of quiet breathing
from Tim’s bed.

My feet slid from under the covets,
groped in the dark for my cordovan slip-
pers, sought their chill depths. I took the
camel’s hair robe from the foot of my bed,
and shuffled quietly, silently, down the long
gallery to the living room. I lit no lamp,
but fumbled in the leather box on the coffee
table for a cigarette, held a match briefly to
its tip. I sat in darkness then. Only occa-
sionally did the mirror opposite the sofa re-
flect the glowing pinpoint of my cigarette.

I stared into darkness, my thoughts tor-
tured, chaotic. How many nights like this
had I known since Tatiana’s going? Or
was this the first? It couldn’t be. This
miserable unhappiness was a pain I’d en-
dured for eternities.

I shivered and wrapped the robe closer
about me. It was cold. And I was alone.
I needn’t have been. There might have been
slanted green eyes glowing lambently into
mine. There might have been hot, moist
lips beneath my own. There might have
been a body, warm, vibrant, alive —

I stiffened.

It was Tim’s fault! A whisper, sly, in
my mind. The cigarette was held now, for-
gotten, in my fingers.

Yes, it was all Tim’s fault. My mouth
twitched. I — I didn’t like Tim. I’d never
liked him, really. I hated Tim!

TATIANA

My eyes narrowed to slits, there in the
dark. The sly whisper was a scream now,
rising in mad crescendo.

I hated Tim. God, how I hated him!

J threw up my head, suddenly, and lis-
tened. I could hear it, even here. The
quiet, even sound of Tim’s breathing. It
filled the apartment, like the pulsing of a
not-far-distant dynamo.

I smiled. And tliere was cunning in
tire smile. And my mind was busy with
crafty plans, selecting, rejecting, finally —
accepting. The mirror on the opposite wall
once again reflected the glowing pinpoint
of light. I watched it widen as my cheeks
sucked in, inhaling deeply of the cigarette.

Then carefully — oh, so carefully! — I ex-
tinguished it in the black marble ashtray,
and stood up. I must be quiet— so very,
very quiet. Cautiously I groped my way to
the gallery. The stars were not more sound-
less than I. The wall under my hand, guid-
ing my footsteps. The bedroom door.

Sh!

Try not to think. Lest the w'aves of hatred
leap from your mind to weaken the silent
sleeper.

Sh!

Perhaps he could hear you — even above
the beating, beating, beating of tliat dynamo,
surging, hurting your ears unbearably, fill-
ing the place with intolerable sound.

Sh!

Watch them now. Your hands. Extend-
ing, hovering. Pale vultures in the gloom.

The pulsations of the dynamo stopped.

Later, there was that hot, bright light. A
hard chair, armless, uncomfortable. They
w'ouldn’t let me smoke, but they smoked
themselves, blowing the acrid fumes tan-
talizingly into my nostrils. And always there
were the voices, endlessly repeating, "Why.^
Why? Why did you do it?”

Until, at last, I wiped my damp palms
on my tweed-covered knees, and tried to
tell them about Tatiana.

But 1 couldn't seem to make them under-
stand that Tatiana had said, "I think some
day, Kerry, you will grow to hate Tim. . . .”

I couldn't seem to make them understand
what Tatiana thought — came true.

And w'hen they never found her — for
how could ihey go beyond the farthest star?
—they sent me here.

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A Mixture of Wonder and Horror

W R.ITES Edmond Hamilton about his novel-
ette in this issue:

I got the idea for "Priestess of the Laby-
rinth” some time ago when I was reading Robett
St. John’s account of his escape from Crete at
the time the Germans conquered it in early 1941.

St. John tells how, when the Nazis were
sweeping down over the Balkans and momen-
tarily expected to attack Crete, he reached the
island and contacted the British vice-consul. To
his astonishment, the vice-consul would talk
only about the nearby ruins of ancient Knossos.

The Nazi paratroopers were already coming,
the decimated Allied forces were retreating to
Egypt in every available fishing-boat, ene.my
bombers were blackening the skies, but the vice-
consul wasn’t interested — all he wanted to talk
about was his obsession, the ancient Cretan civil-
ization. He blandly offered to take the exhausted,
harried fugitives out on a sightseeing trip to
the ruins.

Well, I felt a certain sympathy with tliat vice-
consul. I can see how a man would get so in-
terested in the Cretan riddle that he’d be un-
aware that things were tumbling down around
his ears. For I've always felt that with one
exception, the Carthaginian, there never was so
strange and fascinating a civilization as that of
Crete.

My interest started years ago when I first got
a look at the w'onderful Cretan snake-goddess
that’s up in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Go look at it if you want to see sculpture that
outdoes anything the later Greek sculptors eve:
did. And almost as fine are the famous wild-
bull cups, which are animal figures topping e. en
the A.ssyrian lions.

In Sir Arthur Evans’ books you’ll find de-
saiptions of the incredibly modern life of the

THE EYRIE

Cretans of the great age. Palaces equipped
with modern plumbing, bull-fig!:^ that were
really super-rodeos, modes of dress that would
oe almost at home in our own cities — in some
of these ways the Cretans seem fat nearer to
us tlian the later Greeks.

But in other ways, they were alien enough.
There’s something dark and sinister about the
legends that are ail we really have of Cretan
history, something vaguely horrifying that you
don't find in the myths of later Greeks.

There are tantalizing hints that a few of tbc
Cretans dabbled in scientific research with rather
appalling results. The most famous of these
tales, that of the great scientist Daedalus who
made artificial wings which brought about the
death of his son, is of course familiar enough.

But there are other myths, about Minos and
his queen and the Labyrinth that Daedalus built,
which are too blackly terrible to be printed in
anything but the obscuring Attic of Diodoms
Siculus and Athenaeus and a few other of the
old Greek writers. And it’s that strange mix-
oire of wonder and horror, of lights and shad-
ows, that made me want to write this story
about Crete. Edmond Hamilton.

What Can a Writer Say
AY BRADBURY, who thinks that there
^ isn’t much a writer can say about Iiimself
ihat he hasn’t already said in his story, tells us:
After writing a story like "The Poems” I go
through and see how many times I’ve used some
of my favorite words. All writers have certain
words the)' especially like. With me it’s "amber”
or ' pendulum” or "merry-go-round” or "cal-
lioDe.” Tliere’s something about merry-go-
rou.nds and brass callipoes that, to use the cur-
rent slang, sends me. Perhaps it is the child-
hood memories, from whidi my stories are ex-
tracted, that are aroused by the shrill tooting
and wheezi.ug of callipoes and the up and down
going nowhere in a brilliant circle of those
carnival horses, that prompts me to use those
words and those objects in so man)' of my tales.
As for "pendulum” it was the title of my first
published story three years ago. Only Freud
couid tell you what a pendulum could possibly
mean in my life; perhaps the fear of passing
time, growing old, death; perhaps some subtle
movement, balance, or rhythm.

There’s really not much a writer can say about
himself that he hasn’t already said in the story,
unwittingly. The kiiid of people in his story.

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the Saturday matinee of the new Tom Mix
serial, (2) make a trip to Chicago in the spring
to see a real life stage show, (3) procure a
rabbit with which to practice my magic tricks
on unsuspecting but tolerant relatives. A good
part of my life has been spent anticipating a
merciless doom that might descend the day be-
fore some personal triumph or happiness or ex-
pectation was fulfilled. I believe I even feared
being struck down by some wandering automo-
bile the day I walked to get the first copy of
Weird Tales with my name in it A good deal
of that apprehension has passed, though. It gets
rather boring waiting so many years to be given
the old heave-ho into hell or heaven, and waking
up every morning very much alive in spite of
all fears to the contrary. So I imagine I shall
be around a few more years, somewhat more
peaceful of mind, and not worrying about that
Saturday matinee half as much, and if I should
die before the next Ingrid Bergman film it
would be cruel, I dare say, but no more than I
have expected. And, in dying, I could shout
triumphantly, “I told you so! I knew I wouldn’t
get to see my name on the Weird Tales covet
again, confound it!”

So, fears, prejudices, and premonitions ’and
all the rest, I imagine you pretty well know
me from my stories. The refusal to meet death
inherent in the theme of "There Was An Old
Woman,” "The Ducker,” "The Reunion" and
"The Scythe." 'The escape motive apparent in
"The Sea Shell,” and in this newest story "The
Poems."

Outside of all the above, I find time, between
covert glances over either shoulder, to do pub-
licity work for the American Red Cross Blood
Donor Drive, meet Leigh Brackett twice a mont'i!
at the beadi for a literary gabfest and a bit
of volleyball; read ’Thomas Wolfe, Eudor:.

ANY BOOK IN PRINT!

Dellrerod at your door. We pay postage. Standard
kuthorfi, new bo<^, popular editions, fiction, refer-
ence. medical, mechauit-ai, children's bodis, etc.

at guaranteed savings, ^ad card xlow ter
Clarlison'9 1044 Catalog.

PDpP Write for our great Uluatratedbot^ catalog.
■ short course In literature. The buying

guide of 300.000 book lovers. TSie answer lo your Christ-
mas gift problem. FREE if you write NOW— TODAYI
^^CLARKSON PUBLISHING COMPANY
DffL MW-4, I2S3 S. WabasJi Avc., Chlcaaii, H!

WEIRD BOOKS RENTED

Books by Lovecraft, Merritt, Quinn, etc., renled by mail. 3c a day
plua postage. Write for free list. WEREWOLF LENDING
UBRARY, 621 Maryland Dr., Pittaburgti. Ft.

^ ■MiiifiittifiiiiiitiThr.iiiiiHtitiiitneiFiiigiiitttiiiiiiiiiFiiitaiintfftitnixgiiSiir.;

I READERS* VOTE •

I PRIESTESS OF THE

m LABYRINTH

= REVOLT OF THE

= TREES

m THE GREEN 60DS

I RING

£ Here’s a list a! eight stwies In this tsaue. Won't you =

~ let us know which three you consider the best? Just =

= place the numbers: 1, 2. and 3. respec*^lvely, against your P

S three favorite tales — then clip It out and mail it p

S in to OS. »

I V/EIRDTALES ?

I 9 Rockefeller Ploza New York City |

^liintntiitufiumitiiHttiintiiimriiiiitrtniiifitiiirHiiii'ttQintniifffraiiiiiiijie

8HfP-iN-A-B0TTLE
THE INVERNESS CAPE
THORNE ON THE
THRESHOLD
THE POEMS
TATIANA

THE EYRIE

Weity and Katherine Ann Porter, and panoply
my inotlier’s Swedish meatball sandwiches with
large slices of onion. Otherwise my life is calm
except when H.ink Kuttner writes to kick hell
out of me about some purple passage that
slipped through and bungled the works in my
last yarn. I often wish tliat C. L. Moore would
start writing Weirds again and drive some of
us upstarts out of business. Ray Bradbury.

Warning!

ANLY WADE WELLMAN sent us this

i-VX little note pertaining to John Thunstone’s
latest adventure, “Thorne on the Threshold.”
Writes Wellman:

Very briefly, let me say that the demoniac
invocations in this story are up to a certain
point accurate. Where they differ from the
orthodox, I have changed them deliberately;
because, whatever the stories of John Thunstone
may be, they certainly are not going to become
easy lessons for amateur diabolists.

Manly Wade Wellman.

ST.\TEMBNT OF THE OWNERSHIP. MANAGEMENT.
CIRCULATION. ETC., rc-quired by the Acts of Gongircss
of August 24. 1912. and March Ji, 1933, of WEIRD
TALES, published bi-monthly at New York, N. Y., for
October 1, 1944, State of New York, County of New
York, ss.

Before me, a Notary Public in and for the State and
county aforesaid, personally appeared William J. Delaney,
who, having been duly sworn according to law, deposes
and says that he is the President-Treasurer of SHORT
STORIES, INC.. Publishers of 'WEIRD TALES, and that
the following is. to the best of his knowledge and belief, a
true statement of the ownership, management, etc., of the
aforesaid publication for the date shown in the above cap-
tion, required by the Act of August 24, 1912. as amended
by the Act of March 3, 1933, em'bodied in section 537,
Postal Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of
this form, to wit :

1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor,
managing editor, and business managers are: Publisher.
SHORT STORIES. INC.. 9 Rockefeller Plaza, Now York
20. N. Y. ; Editor, D. Mcllwraith, 9 Rockefeller Plaza, New
York 20, N. Y. : Manaoinp Editor, None ; Bueitiess Mari'-
aper, William J. Delaney, 9 Rockefeller Plaza, New York
20. N. Y.

2. That the owner us; SHORT STORIES, INC., 9
Rockefeller Plaza. New York 20, N. Y. : William J. Delaney,
9 Rockefeller Piaza, New York 20. N. Y.

3. That the known bundholdors, mortgagees, and other
security holders owning or holding 1 per cent or more^ of
total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities,
are: None.

4. That the two paragraphs next above giving the names
of the owners, stockholders, and secmdty holders, if any.
contain not only the list of stockholders and security
holders as they appear upon the books of the company but
also, in cases where the stockholder or security holder
appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in
any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or
corporation for whom such trustee is acting, is given ;
also that the said two paragraphs contain statements em-
bracing affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the circum-
stances and conditions under which stocitholders and
security holders who do not appear upon the books of the
company as trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity
other than that of a bona fide owner; and this affiant ha.s
uo reason to believe that any other person, association, or
corporation has any interest dii'eet or indirect in the said
stock, bonds, or other securities than as so stated by him.

(Signed) W. J. Delaney, President.

Sworn to and stAscribod before me this 22nd day of
September, 1944.

[seal] (Signed) Hy. J. Paukowski.

NotaiT Public. Bronx Co. No., 13, Reg. No. 51-P5. Cert,
filed in N. Y. Co.. No. 227. Reg. No 180-P5.

My commissioa expires March 80, 1946.

FOR POST WAR SUCCESS-

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